
Class 

Book 

Copyright 1^?. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSn^ 



BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



In the Beauty of Meadow and Mountain 

8vo, net, $2.50 
The Reasonable Religion 

■ 16mo, net, 50 cents 



OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 



BY 

CHARLES COKE WOODS 




NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS 
CINCINNATI: JENNINGS & GRAHAM 






Copyright, 1914, by 
CHARLES COKE WOODS 



APR i3 1914 



IC1.A371354 



h 



WITH LOVE 
TO 

MY GOSPEL SINGING SON 
EDWARD MARTINDALE WOODS 



CONTENTS 

PAGB 

A Foreword 7 

The Prayer 9 

The Sky Song of the Soul 11 

I 

The Skyward Look from Life 13 

Taking a Look at Life 15 

The Master of the Shadows 40 

The Scarecrows of Life 59 

II 

The Skyward Look from Literature 71 

Songs Across the Storm 73 

The Soul in Tennyson's Masterpiece 74 

Shakespeare and the Soul 87 

A Study of Sorrow and the Soul 100 

A Literary Searchlight of the Soul — Robert Browning 116 

III 

The Skyward Look from Scripture 123 

His Word 125 

The Scripture Setting of Life 126 

Dreamers 139 

Holden Eyes 143 

The Ministry of Mercy 150 

Points on Power 156 

Giants, and Grasshoppers 161 

The Persistence of Personality 163 

The Prerogative of Faith 169 

The King and the Beggars 172 

Shelter 179 

A Soul Among Swine 182 

God's Siftings 188 

5 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Prince 190 

Love 195 

Sowing and Reaping 199 

The Death of Dagon 203 

Room 206 

Genius and Jesus 210 

The Foot-fall of the King 213 

The Way of the Transgressor 218 

The Promises of God 220 

Other Gods 222 

Paul in Athens 225 

The Endurance of Love 229 



A FOREWORD 

We must keep the balance between physical 
experiment and spiritual experience. We must 
not become so fascinated with "scientific facts" 
as to lose the working strength of a spiritual 
faith. The soul is still the star of greatest 
magnitude in life's sky. This star must keep 
burning or our spiritual skies will grow dim 
and dark. Our night will fall and never lift if 
we lose sight of Him who is "the day spring 
from on high." 

On a day in autumn I saw a prairie eagle 
mortally hurt by a rifle shot. His eye still 
gleamed like a circle of light. Then he slowly 
turned his head and gave one more searching 
and longing look at the sky. He had often 
swept those starry spaces with his wonderful 
wings. The beautiful sky was the high home 
of his heart. It was the eagle's domain. A 
thousand times he had exploited there his 
splendid strength. In those far-away heights 
he had played with the lightnings and raced 
with the winds. And now, so far away from 
home, the eagle lay dying, done to the death, 
because for once he forgot and flew too low. 
The soul is that eagle. This is not its home. 
It must not lose the skyward look. 



8 A FOREWORD 

We must keep faith, we must keep hope, we 
must keep courage, we must keep Christ. We 
would better creep away from the battlefield at 
once if we are not going to be brave. The 
ramparts of a thousand wrongs are falling — 
this is no time for the soul to stampede. God's 
uncoimted chariots of fire are sweeping down 
the skies. Keep the skyward look, my soul; 
keep the skyward look. 

In these pages I have sought to touch the 
deeper movements of life and experience in 
such a way as to show that their supreme 
significance is spiritual. I have tried to light 
my torch at the fires of Life, Literature, and 
the Holy Scriptures. If these essays help some 
traveler to find his way among the tangled 
thickets of the dark, if they shed some light on 
his "Spiritual Skies," I shall be greatly glad. 

Foot of "Mount Baldy," 

Ontario, California, 

January 30, 1914. 



THE PRAYER 

Almighty God and All-loving Father, some- 
times we have walked mider starless skies that 
dripped darkness like drenching rain. We de- 
spaired of starshine or moonlight or sunrise. 
The sullen blackness gloomed above us as if it 
would last forever. And out of the deeps of the 
dark there spoke no soothing voice to mend 
our broken hearts. We would gladly have wel- 
comed some wild thunder peal to break the 
torturing stillness of that overbrooding night. 

But thy winsome whisper of eternal love 
spoke more sweetly to our bruised and bleeding 
souls than any winds that breathe across aeolian 
harps. It was thy "still small voice" that 
spoke to us. We were listening and we heard. 
We looked and saw thy face radiant with the 
light of love. And when we heard thy voice 
and saw thy face new life came back to us as 
life comes back to withered blooms that drink 
the summer rain. 

We thank thee, O our gracious Lord, that 
thy smile of grace and love clears all the clouds 
away. The skies of day are white with light of 
harvest noons, and when the evening shadows 
weave the dusky drapery of night thy lustrous 

9 



10 THE PRAYER 

promise-stars shine forth — the sweet forget-me- 
nots of God. 

In the name of Christ our Lord, who is our 
Hght and life and strength, we give thee thanks 
for multitudes of mercies that have filled our 
nights and days. We thank thee for the hollow 
of thy hand in which we hide. We thank thee 
for thy strength by which we walk triumphant 
ways of toil. We thank thee for "Our Spiritual 
Skies" set thick with thy eternal stars — and 
forevermore we give thee thanks. Amen. 



THE SKY SONG OF THE SOUL 

The storm's swift wings belong to God, 

He folds them when he will; 
He speaks above the thunder's voice. 

And bids the din be still; 
His lips of love shall drink the dark 

From every bitter night, 
And all my clouded skies shall fill 

With his unclouded light. 

No dreams of good are aught too good 

Some day to come full true; 
The largest hope is nearest right — 

God's upper skies are blue; 
All dark despairs shall turn to hope. 

All sobbings into song. 
For God and good still hold the throne. 

And right shall conquer wrong. 



11 



I 

THE SKYWARD LOOK FROM LIFE 



IS 



I will lift up mine eyes. — David. 

The man who sees the whole of life must be an optimist. 
— Phillips Brooks. 

It takes a great deal of life to make a little art. — Alfred de 
Musset. 



14 



TAKING A LOOK AT LIFE 

Climb the mast till you are above the fog which lies on 
the surface of the water, and you will see the sun shining on 
the spiritual world. — Ian Maclaren. 

If I have faltered, more or less. 
In my great task of happiness; 
If I have moved among my race 
And shown no glorious morning face; 
If beams from happy human eyes 
Have moved me not; if morning skies. 
Books, and my food and summer rain 
Knocked on my sullen heart in vain. 
Lord, thy most pointed pleasure take 
And STAB my spirit wide awake. 

— Robert Louis Stevensoi 

"If you have gone a little way ahead of me, call back; 
'Twill cheer my heart and help my feet along the stony track; 
And if, perchance. Faith's light is dim, because the oil is low. 
Your call will guide my lagging course as wearily I go. 

"If you will say He heard you when your prayer was but a cry. 
And if you'll say he saw you through the night's sin-darkened 

sky— 
If you have gone a little way ahead, O, friend, call back; 
'Twill cheer my heart and help my feet along the stony track." 

Life is a steep climb, and it does the heart 
good to have somebody "call back" and cheer- 
ily beckon us on up the high hill. We are all 
climbers together and we must help one 
another. Every successful climber must have 
firm foothold. In climbing the steep places it 

15 



16 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

will not do to depend upon the shale. It is 
fragile. Granite is rooted in the mountains. 
That is safe. Life, like the mountains, has 
both shale and granite. The climber must 
make choice to fail or succeed, according as he 
chooses the shale or the granite for his feet. 
This mountain-climbing is serious business, but 
glorious. It takes strength and steady steps to 
find the summits. The outlook widens with 
the altitude. If any one among us has found 
anything worth while, we ought to "call back." 
Above "the timber line" one summer after- 
noon I met a young man coming down the 
mountainside. When I hailed him he said, 
"The climb is too steep and the air is too 
thin." He had lost heart and was going back 
to the valleys. Multitudes are doing that in 
the actual experience of life. Many have given 
up the hope of reaching the top and are headed 
toward the bottom. Well, I know it is a far 
cry to perfection, but we must keep crying in 
that direction. It is sure that we shall never 
find the mountain's brow by traveling toward 
its base. I think I should have become dis- 
heartened in that dizzy climb toward the sum- 
mit of Pike's Peak one summer day if the 
two stout-hearted companions who were with 
me had not frequently and cheerily, with sym- 
pathy and courage in the tone, paused occa- 



TAKING A LOOK AT LIFE 17 

sionally for my sake to "call back." And it is 
in their spirit that I write these lines. 

Another feature of that mountain climb it 
would be well to note. At every step we 
were rewarded with a fresh and fuller outlook 
and uplook. That twofold reward is the 
greatest glory of the mountain climb. I might 
as well say at once that whatever view of 
life does not carry with it outlook and uplook 
is not the true view. Any other look at life is 
inadequate and unsatisfactory. You have not 
seen the mountain when you have seen only its 
base. You have not seen the ocean when you 
have seen only the beach. The truest and 
largest view even of the planet on which we 
live must take in the sky. Our little world has 
sky relationships, and any view that does not 
take in these relationships would be unscien- 
tific and unsatisfactory. Human life is larger 
than any world and all worlds, and any view 
of life that leaves out the sky view must be 
inadequate. The skies of living beliefs must 
overarch our deadly doubts. The skies of hope 
must overarch our dark despairs. The skies of 
enduring life must bend above our death cham- 
bers and our graveyards. To make life worth 
living at all, we must have some view of life 
which makes it unmistakably clear that it does 
not all end in the dark. To do the work of 



18 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

life we must have a working view of life. No 
man can do the big business of life if he looks 
at life as a succession of leaps into the dark. 
A right view of life is essential to one who 
would do his part in the world's biggest and 
best business. 

A few years ago a New York journal at- 
tributed the following pathetic lines to the 
Czar of all the Russias. Whether that mon- 
arch wrote these words or not, they breathe 
forth, or rather sob forth, a view of life which 
would utterly cut the nerve of any high or 
heroic endeavor. It is a view that utterly 
paralyzes power: 

My happiness was born at night. 

And suckled in the gloom; 
My pleasures have dissolved in flight. 

Heart-stricken at my doom; 
My soul strives vainly for relief. 

Chilled as by drifting snow 
By doubts, which mock at the belief 

Of finding peace below. 

Who could throw light on life out of such a 
dungeon of darkness as that? Who could lift 
empires with a burden like that breaking his 
back? Such a view of life is as deadening as 
death. Life's engineries cannot be run by 
steamless boilers. The trolley minus the elec- 
tric power would as well be a twine string. 



TAKING A LOOK AT LIFE 19 

But let us examine the four principal views 
that men take of life. There is the Material- 
isfs view of life. We need strength — does this 
view give strength .^^ Life has great sorrows — 
are there any great solaces in this view? The 
workman grows weary — does this view of life 
give rest? Does the materialist's view of life 
help to heal the wounds that we are all sure 
to get sooner or later in life's battle? When we 
lick the dust of some dreadful defeat will this 
materialistic view of life stand us on our 
feet again and set us going? When the skies of 
life go dim above our heads, and the last star 
is swallowed up in the darkness, will this view 
of life part the clouds and sweep them away? 
In the long and lonesome stretches of service, 
will this view keep us steady and strong? 
When awful storms of doubt and disappoint- 
ment, of baffling bereavements and of grief, 
shall turn their stinging darts upon us, will 
this view of life help us up the storm-swept 
heights to the sunny summits? In a word, 
does the materialist's view of life support the 
struggle of life? That is a fair test of any 
theory of life. What is it worth in the dust 
and smoke of the workaday world? If starva- 
tion of soul should stare us in the face, would 
this view of life offer us a stone, or bread? 
would it offer us an egg or a serpent? If 



30 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

materialism seeks the rational recognition of 
our day, it must come right out into the open 
and submit to the searching tests of human 
experience. In broad daylight it must bare its 
breast to the tests of truth. How fares this 
view in the noonlight of our day.? Does it 
"measure up"? 

What is materialism's view of the soul.^^ Is 
this view up to the levels of scientific and 
psychological discovery? Perhaps material- 
ism says its best word in its so-called definition 
of the soul. Here is that definition: "The 
soul is the function of material organization." 
What? A ^Junction"? Why, man, a function 
is not a functionary. Does materialism mean 
to tell us that the soul is a mere act, and not 
the actor? If the soul is only a function, then 
where is human life's functionary. A function 
is only the process of a functionary. 

Is literature the "function of material or- 
ganization"? Then fill the cases with type; 
bring the sheets of book paper; get the press 
ready; the world must have a literary mas- 
terpiece. It needs an allegory, a drama, an 
epic poem, an undying lyric. Let the press 
and the type and the paper produce them. 
No, this is not enough. Call the printer. 
There he is at his desk. But he is just dead of 
heart-failure. Here is plenty of "material or- 



TAKING A LOOK AT LIFE 21 

ganization," yet no literary product is possible 
under these conditions. What ails the situa- 
tion? The trouble is that presses and types 
and paper, and even the warm body of a dead 
printer, are all absolutely powerless to produce 
living literature. Give us the living spirit of 
Bunyan, and that living spirit will give us the 
allegory. Give us the living spirit of Shake- 
speare, and we shall have the drama. Give us 
the mighty soul of Milton, and we shall have 
"Paradise Lost." Give us the living Tenny- 
son, and we shall have the undying "Crossing 
the Bar." Not even literature is "the function 
of material organization." Literature is the 
organized product of the immaterial organizer, 
the human spirit of the writer. As the leaf, 
the bloom, the fruit of the apple tree are the 
output of that mysterious something which we 
call "life" — intangible, invisible, and imma- 
terial — :SO is literature the output of the in- 
visible and immaterial human spirit. The 
deepest truth about it is that literature is the 
product of an immaterial organizer. 

Is art the "function of material organiza- 
tion"? Then bring the easel. Fill the paint 
pots with paint. Bring the brushes. Make 
ready the canvas. Throw back the studio 
window-blinds and let in the light. Mankind 
has need of the Landseer dogs, the Bonheur 



2^ OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

horses, the Turner landscapes burning with the 
light and dreamy with the shadows. Human 
life will be infinitely enriched with Raphael's 
"Madonna," Angelo's "Moses" and "Last 
Judgment," with Holman Hunt's "Christ at 
the Door," and the Christ pictures by Tissot 
and Hofmann and Munk^csy. If these are 
"functions of material organization," by all 
means let us have them. Here are now in the 
studio the pots, the easels, the brushes, the 
canvas. The light is right. But the picture 
makers — where are they.? We shall have no 
pictures till they come. The immaterial spirit 
must come before this canvas can blossom into 
beauty. Then, after this living, invisible spirit 
has put this apocalypse of beauty and wonder 
on the canvas, it will need more than the eye of 
an ox or horse to catch the greatness of its 
glory in light and shadow, in line and color. 
It ought to be plain to any clear-seeing mind 
that immaterial potentialities are the supreme 
things here. Art is the product of an imma- 
terial, invisible, spiritual organizer. This at- 
mosphere and sense of the invisible hangs 
about a work of art and is spiritually sensed 
as actually as the olfactory nerve senses the 
invisible fragrance of the honeysuckle. 

Is music "the function of material organiza- 
tion"? Music is the melodious outbreathing of 



TAKING A LOOK AT LIFE 23 

the musician's breath. There can be no music 
without the musician's invisible spirit. Place 
in the music hall the most perfectly con- 
structed piano, organ, harp, or violin, and it 
would be as silent as a stone, did not the im- 
material spirit of the musician touch it to 
melody. Without the invisible spirit of the 
musician the material musical instrument is as 
musicless as a rock. How silent and unre- 
sponsive are the instruments of Sousa's band 
when the master and his players are asleep in 
their bedchambers! But these silent, dead 
things will all come to life again when the liv- 
ing spirits of the musicians return. Only yes- 
terday I held in my hand an old violin. It was 
dated 1712. Close examination revealed the 
name of that wonderful wizard, Stradivarius. 
How I wished that Paganini or Ole Bull could 
breathe across those sleeping strings! In- 
visible sea winds were blowing their breath 
through the tops of the old pine trees along 
the avenue, and in their sighings there were 
faint suggestions of song, but not a note of 
music came from that old and yellow violin. 
All the violins of the world would be like that, 
were all the violinists away. Music is the 
output of an immaterial, invisible, spiritual 
organizer. 

Now we have arrived at the necessary con- 



M OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

elusion that literature is the organization of 
letters. Art is the organization of colors. Music 
is the organization of sounds. But the or- 
ganization is secondary; the organizer is 
primary. It is plain that the soul is not the 
"function of material organization," but the 
functionary, humanly speaking, of all organi- 
zations. If this is true in the finite ranges 
and reaches of life, it is also true in the infinite 
spheres of life. 

The materialist's view of life as to depth is 
too shallow, as to height too low, as to width 
too narrow, as to length it is too short. It 
is too small a blanket to cover the giant soul. 
Its fountains are dry wells, its days are sun- 
less and its nights are starless. It has no food 
for humanity's hunger, no water for our thirst, 
no light for our darkness, no strength for our 
weakness, no guidance for our bewilderments, 
no hope for our despairs, no adequate supplies 
for our infinite needs. Materialism gives no 
sufficient account of literature, art, or music, 
and therefore it is unable to give satisfactory 
account of man, the maker of all these. As a 
"working theory" of life it will not work. As 
a view of life it is fair to say that materialism 
is unsane, insufficient, unsatisfactory, and alto- 
gether unequal to the great occasion. It fum- 
bles and is un-at-home in things of the soul. 



TAKING A LOOK AT LIFE 25 

It is puzzled to speechlessness at a bird's song. 
What would it do with this? — 

"I wonder how the robin's throat 
Hath caught the rain's sweet, dripping note — 
That little falling, pelting sound, 
Liquidly clear and crystal round, 

The very heart-rune of the spring, 
Enchanted of the sky and ground. 

That conjures life from everything. 

"No ancient, age- worn witchery. 
No incantation, could set free 
The fast-bound dead; yet here each day, 
Robin and rain in mystic way 

Bring back life greenly. Ah, and how 
One's heart and pulse obey 

That lure of music! Listen now." 

What if we take the Fatalisms view of life. 
The old Greek myth tells us of the three fates, 
or the three destinies. One holds the distaff, 
the other is weaving, and the third cuts the 
threads. That is an impressive suggestion. 
But is there not a larger view of life than 
that? Who or what holds the distaff? Who 
does the weaving? Who cuts the thread? 
What relation does my choice have to the 
holder of the distaff? What relation do I 
sustain to the weaver? Shall I have any say 
as to when or how the "thread" shall be cut? 
Am I a puppet or a person? Am I a thing or a 
disposer of things? Am I as a ball shot from a 
rifle, going perforce where the powder drives 



26 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

me? Is there no personal potency in my choice 
that can unlock the keys of kingdoms? Do I 
not feel the underswell of an infinite sea? Am 
I a bubble or a sailor on that sea? These are 
fair questions to put to the fatalist. These 
questions themselves have a meaning. The 
answers with which they are met must have 
equivalent meanings. These great longings of 
my soul must be met by something other than 
mere echoes from life's hillsides. Does the 
fatalist's view of life match these longings or 
does it mock them? There is a spiritual in- 
sistence in every real man which eternally 
refuses to be put off by evasive replies to 
these stupendous questions which everlastingly 
surge up from the far-away profounds of life. 
The overflowingly full desires of life cannot be 
set aside by "the emptiness of ages." Mere 
vaporizings and vacuities cannot supply the 
subsoil of the soul. 

The fatalistic view of life does away with 
faith. Faith makes petitions to the over- 
ruling power. But fatalism holds that what- 
ever that power is, it will grind ceaselessly on 
till the grist is ground to a powder; that power 
has no feeling which matches the meaning in 
the word "tenderness"; that power is abso- 
lutely unregarding toward the deepest hungers 
of the heart. The quality of mercy is as far 



TAKING A LOOK AT LIFE 27 

removed from such a power as the east is from 
the west. It is clearly what in political par- 
lance would be called the "steam-roller" view 
of life. The huge roller will roll on, no matter 
who prays. In actual experience this view of 
life makes faith and prayer but silly delusions. 

Fatalism does not furnish a working view of 
life, because it smothers hope and aspiration. 
Where faith is gone the case is hopeless, for 
faith and hope are always close of kin. No 
prayer is possible where there is neither faith 
nor hope. And without something at least 
akin to the spirit of prayer there can be no 
outreachings of life known as aspirations. 

No confirmed fatalist could have poured out 
of his life that exquisite prayer poem of Hall 
Caine concerning the tragedj^ of the Titanic. 
When the soul is utterly swept from all earthly 
landings its next move is to look to the eternal 
moorings. We may call this inner urgency 
instinct, or intuition, or leave it unnamed — 
it is there as a spiritual fact that we feel. In 
this simple and sublime lyric prayer we can 
sense spiritual waves that beat against the 
eternal landings. 

Lord of the everlasting hills, 

God of the boundless sea. 
Help us through all the shocks of fate 

To keep our faith in thee. 



28 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

When nature's unrelenting arm 

Sweeps us like withes away. 
Maker of man, be thou our strength. 

And our eternal stay. 

When blind, insensate, heartless force 

Puts out our passing breath. 
Help us to see thy guiding light 

In darkness and in death. 

We are thy children, frail and small. 

Formed of the lowly sod; 
Comfort our bruised and bleeding souls. 

Father and Lord and God. 

In all the best of fatalism there is nothing 
which is comparable to the spiritual strength 
and upsweep of vision found in these noble 
lines. There is something in them to live by 
and, if we must, something to die by. If the 
pilgrim is to continue his pilgrimage, you must 
leave him his staff, and faith is his staff. 
Fatalism plunders the pilgrim of his staff. 

The fatalistic view of life is not only de- 
structive of faith and hope and prayer, but it 
makes for a cowardly shift of personal re- 
sponsibility. Ever since Adam said, "She 
tempted me and I did eat," an effort to shift 
responsibility has been an easy tendency of 
human nature. 

There is a fatalism of ancestry which shows 
itself in the oft-repeated words, "I was born 
thus and so," "I inherited this from my father 



TAKING A LOOK AT LIFE 29 

or mother." If the trait is a fault or a vice, 
the speaker usually means that he is excusable 
because it is an inheritance from his parents. 
Unquestionably, in the estimates of conduct 
and character, both as to our own and that of 
others, we must reckon more or less with in- 
herited tendencies. But this thing can be 
overdone. No man has a right to plead this, 
and this alone, as an excuse for habitual pre- 
varication. I think it is plain to every careful 
observer that in much of the loose moralizing 
of our day this fatalistic notion has done a 
deal of mischief. 

For others' faults we see no use. 
But for our own find much excuse; 
We charge our sins from week to week. 
To dear dead folks that never speak. 

There is a fatalism of temperament. Some 
try to get away from the responsibility of their 
evildoing by reminding us that they have a 
"musical temperament," or an "artistic tem- 
perament." What a dreary world this would 
be without these temperaments! We could not 
have spared Rubinstein and Bach, Hogarth and 
Rembrandt. The musical temperament is more 
responsible for music than anybody else in the 
world who has not the musical temperament. 
And as for discords, without doubt he is least 
excusable for producing such disturbances. 



30 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

Surely if a man is inexcusable for anything, it 
is for the doing of that thing which he has 
been given the greatest natural gift not to do. 

Exactly the same thing is true with reference 
to the natural capacity for painting beautiful 
pictures. Yet in some quarters we have been 
asked to give the largest license for unsightli- 
ness and ugliness to such gifted persons. Un- 
questionably, if we are to hold anybody re- 
sponsible for breaking with beauty, it is the 
man who has the greatest natural gift for 
producing it. If we are going to reason at all, 
let us be reasonable enough to recognize the 
fact that there is such a thing as a syllogism. 
If we are going into the bird world, let us be 
reasonable enough to expect the singing to 
be done by the nightingales and mocking- 
birds, and not by buzzards and crows. And we 
shall never excuse the mocking-bird if he in- 
sists on confining himself to the commonplace 
"Caw" of the crow. He knows better, and we 
know he knows better. 

But there is a fatalism of circumstances. 
"Man is a creature of circumstances" — we have 
often heard that. Certainly he is not oblivious 
to his circumstances, nor is he uninfluenced by 
them. But is there not a tinge of fatalistic 
fallacy in that old saying? Has it not often 
been the lazy man's way of excusing himself 



TAKING A LOOK AT LIFE 31 

for not trying to change circumstances? The 
other old saying, that "Every man is the archi- 
tect of his own fortune," comes nearer teUing 
the truth about Hfe. Well, if "man is a creature 
of circumstances," he is hardly equal to insects 
and birds in that particular. The honeybee 
does not like to be surrounded by the bare 
boards of an empty hive, and it creates the 
circumstances of a hive full of honey. A cer- 
tain little water-bug blows a bubble on the 
surface of the pond and pulls the little bubble 
house down to the bottom for his home. He 
did not like his other circumstances, and he 
built that little bubble house to improve them. 
On an April day I saw a robin that was not 
pleased with bare boughs in the old apple tree. 
She did not like such naked circumstances, and 
to better her surroundings she built a nest of 
mud and horsehair and twine strings. She was 
a creator of circumstances. Plainly, then, if 
bugs and birds are builders of circumstances, 
men ought to be. The "creature-of -circum- 
stances" theory is too lazy to be a working 
philosophy of life; but it is one phase of the 
fatalistic view of life. 

The fatalist's view of life is fatal to faith, 
hope, prayer, and the highest sense of per- 
sonal responsibility. If it were the right view, 
so much wrong would not come out of it. The 



S2 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

fatalist's view of life is unsound, inadequate, 
and unsatisfactory. It is not large enough to 
meet life's occasion. 

"Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul. 
As the swift seasons roll! 
Leave thy low- vaulted past! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last. 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 
Till thou at length art free. 
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!" 

What if we take the Agnostic's view of life.^ 
Has he not said that "God is the unknowable" .^^ 
Has he not tortured us by his premature an- 
nouncement that "The Great Companion" is 
dead? We have heard him moan across the 
stormy seas of life saying, "Whether in mid- 
ocean or among the breakers of the farther 
shore, a wreck must mark at last the end of 
each and all." Has he put a single finger 
under any of our loads .^ Has he blotted one 
cloud from life's darkened skies .^^ Has he solved 
any of our puzzles.^ Has his view of life made it 
easier for any of us to live? How many thorns has 
he plucked away and how many flowers has he 
planted? He said he was bound for the Temple 
of Truth, but if he ever arrived he must have 
thrown away the keys, for he never entered. 
Browning was not speaking of him when he 
said, "Never doubted clouds would break." 
Longfellow was not voicing the agnostic's ex- 



TAKING A LOOK AT LIFE„ 33 

perience when he sang, "Out of the shadows of 
night the world rolls into light." Victor Hugo's 
word to the atheists of France thrilled with a 
hope to which the agnostic is an eternal stranger 
when his great soul struck up the singing, "The 
tomb is not a blind alley — it closes on the 
twilight and opens with the dawn." Katharine 
Lee Bates had no reference to the agnostic's 
experience when she was singing about "Whis- 
pers of eternity in all the winds that pass." 
Agnosticism tells us that we cannot know God. 
But "God is love," and if the human soul can 
know anything, it can know the experience of 
love. The baby knew love before it knew that 
it could know. 

Agnosticism breaks down utterly when life's 
testing times are upon us. It is a broken 
reed in the mire of misery. I saw it tested 
once out in the open when an awful storm 
swept across a young lawyer's soul. He was 
president of the Agnostic Club. No great 
grief had crossed his path. No tempest had 
ever torn the roof from over his head. Be it 
said to his honor that he had loved his mother 
well. One day, of a sudden, her voice hushed 
into a strange stillness and the lovelight faded 
from her eyes nevermore to return. That 
young man's soul was shattered and stunned 
as if shot through with rifle balls. We were 



34 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

friends. On a beautiful Sunday morning, as I 
arose to announce the opening hymn for the 
sacred service of the day, I caught sight of 
one approaching with a message. It came 
from the young agnostic and was a request for 
Christian hymn books containing the songs, 
"Jesus, Lover of My Soul" and "Nearer, My 
God, to Thee." As that young agnostic sobbed 
out his grief he found no solace save in the 
hope that gleamed like a sunrise in those im- 
mortal hymns. But he had to wait till life's 
brightest sun of love had set before he learned 
how utterly dark and hopeless is the dreadful 
shift of agnosticism. It is a sound that started 
out to be a song, but has nothing left but a 
sob. 

What if we take the Christian view of life.f^ 
That is different, wholly different from any of 
the views which we have considered. A great 
belief beats at the heart of us all when we 
take this view. The influence of such belief 
untethers the soul from sordid things. Meas- 
ured from the standpoint of its influence alone, 
this view of life is of infinitely more practical 
value than any or all of the other views com- 
bined. We cannot help thinking that any 
view of life which helps the heart to believe in 
the big and blessed things is the best view. 

The Christian view of life is threefold. These 



TAKING A LOOK AT LIFE 35 

points are familiar, but they do not belong to 
the other views of life which we have been 
considering. And these three things are in- 
dispensable to life's lasting satisfactions and 
successes. 

The first part of this threefold view is faith. 
By this good old word I do not mean a philos- 
ophy about beliefs. As useful as a theological 
creed may be, I do not mean that. I mean a 
central spiritual conviction in which is rooted 
the satisfying sense that the Maker and Ruler 
of the universe is absolutely and eternally 
reliable. Such faith does not rest on theo- 
logical dogmas or psychological theories, inter- 
esting as some of these may be. It does not 
depend upon resolutions enacted by religious 
parliaments. It does rest upon the deepest 
spiritual conviction of which the soul can be 
conscious that the Ruler of this universe is a 
Person who is perfectly wise, perfectly power- 
ful, and perfectly good. It is only around 
such a faith that a man can build a life that is 
wise, powerful, good. No man can stand 
steadily if he be constantly shifting from one 
foot to another. This spiritual faith will make 
a man spiritually strong and sure-footed. It 
ought also to be said that such faith will cause 
the mind to look forward to the further un- 
foldments of perfect plans. And this will keep 



36 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

the heart toned up to the highest levels of 
strength and service. 

The second part of this threefold Christian 
view of life is hope. This is also one of our 
oldest words, but the experience which it 
stands for needs constant renewal. If any- 
body is to go on long pilgrimages of large 
achievements, he must be sustained with a 
heart full of this outreach of life called hope. 
Any view of life that is unhopeful is unhelpful. 
The highest heroisms of human history have 
sprung from hope. All currents of enduring 
power in service have flowed from the inex- 
haustible well-head of hope. Hope gives reach 
to life's endeavors as nothing else can do. Any 
view of life that leaves out hope is shorn of 
strength. It is like a bucket without a bot- 
tom — ^it will not hold water. And if we are to 
do any worthwhile service for men, we must 
travel over wide desert spaces through which 
we shall need to carry something that will 
hold water, else we shall famish. Hope must 
be a bucket that is well bottomed and proof 
against leakage. It is only the hope that the 
Christian view of life supplies which can be 
called a sure and steadfast anchor, and we would 
as well try to walk the waves of life's stormy 
seas as to try to sail them in ships that carry 
no anchor. 



TAKING A LOOK AT LIFE S7 

The third and greatest part in this threefold 
Christian view of life is lave. No word has 
been intended to mean more, and none has 
been made to mean less. "Faith, hope, love, 
but the greatest of these is love." Love is to 
life what the hub is to the wheel; all the rest 
is built about this strong center. Love is the 
obbligato in all of life's song. The love at the 
heart of this Christian view of life not only 
has family interests, but human race interests. 
Its local views widen out into world visions. 
It may have roots in the earthlies, but it 
flowers and fruits in the heavenlies. Such 
love is never indigenous to the soil of selfish- 
ness. 

"Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all the chords 
with might — 
Smote the chord of self, that, trembling passed in music out 
of sight." 

This love is of such a nature that it finds its 
highest happiness in serving others. It is ill at 
ease till it can ease another's pain. It rises into 
heights and atmospheres that lie beyond the 
natural order. Of love, Charles Hanson Towne 
thus sings: 

Love is most glad with cruel bands 
To bind his tender feet and hands. 

To scourge himself, to know all loss. 

To carry far his heavy cross 
Into the vaguest distant lands. 



38 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

To suffer — O, love understands 

The awful waste of desert sands; 

Strange that on beds of thorns to toss. 
Love is most glad! 

And for his service love demands 

No sacrifice. Lo! he stands 

Calling his golden deeds but dross. 
Flaunting the proud world's piteous gloss; 

When flayed and wounded on life's strands. 
Love is most glad. 

This survey of life is now at its finish. We 
have found the materiaHstic view of Hfe inade- 
quate and unsatisfactory. It is not equal to 
the occasion. We have found that the fatalis- 
tic view of life smothers the sense of personal 
responsibility. It is insufficient and unsatis- 
fying. The agnostic view of life leaves us 
helpless and hopeless. We feel that the ag- 
nostic is a tired traveler who has utterly failed 
to find the right road. There is no light at all 
in his lantern. There is no uplook or outlook 
to any of these views of life. They are against 
the highest hopes of the heart. They are not 
supported by the deepest facts of human ex- 
perience. They leave the soul suspicious and 
uneasy. Even those who hold such views 
wish in their hearts that they could find some- 
thing better. The Christian view is better 
because it makes for everything that is better. It 
oils the whole machinery of life and sets it 
going. It drains from the cup of experience 



TAKING A LOOK AT LIFE 39 

life's bitterest despairs. It gives the soul a 
solid rock on which to stand and "fight the 
good fight of faith." The Christian view of 
life fits into the scheme of things and gives 
everlasting meaning to the whole program. 
It is sober truth to say that if we follow the 
premises of materialism, fatalism, or agnos- 
ticism, we shall arrive at the logical conclusion 
that human life is a madhouse in charge of an 
insane superintendent. All the latest findings 
and facts of spiritual experience and scientific 
investigations make us wholly unready for 
such a finale. The threefold Christian view of 
life is in better repute than ever before in the 
Christian centuries. The more the white light 
of truth converges upon it, the more clearly it 
comes into view, and the more satisfactory it 
seems to the intellect and the soul of mankind. 
It has a supernal freshness about it which none 
of the other views can claim, and is wholly up 
to the greatest occasions of life. 



THE MASTER OF THE SHADOWS 

My own hope is, a sun shall pierce 
The deepest cloud earth ever stretched. 

— Robert Browning. 

Shadows may be used or they may be de- 
stroyed. In either case they are mastered, for 
the force that uses them or destroys them is 
master. In some spheres the shadow condi- 
tion is the condition of greatest growth. The 
beautiful Indian corn never grows more rap- 
idly than in the shadows of a warm summer 
night. The sun curls the leaves in the sultry 
noon light, but they quickly unfold if a cloud 
slips over the sky. There is a service in the 
shadow that is not in the shine. Life needs 
the shadow. Only the shadow must be mas- 
tered into service. Nothing but simshine 
would make a desert of any land. 

If all of life were sunshine. 

Our faces would be fain 
To feel once more upon them 

The cooling plash of rain. 

— Henry van Dylee, 

The world of stellar beauty is never seen at 
its best till the shadows of night slip over the 
sky. There are beauties that bloom in the 
shade that will not bloom in the sun. There is 
much greenery in lands of fog and cloud and 

40 



THE MASTER OF THE SHADOWS 41 

shadow. The florist has "evening glories" now 
as well as morning-glories. The evening glory 
will not shine in the noon's splendor, but 
comes to its best as the shadows of evening 
deepen. I have been awakened at midnight 
to see the beautiful night-blooming Cereus. 
The shadows hold beauties that fade in the 
sunshine. That is a truth in nature and in 
human experience. 

When the musician presses the black keys 
on the great organ the music is as sweet as 
when he touches the white ones, but to get 
the capacity music of the instrument he must 
touch them all. Horace Bushnell wrote about 
the "Moral Uses of Dark Things," and all 
human history justifies his treatment of that 
theme. Many of the brightest things in life 
and in literature are woven of darkest shadows. 
When we remember whose hand is on the loom 
such faith ought to be easy. To Him the dark- 
ness and the light are both alike. 

Any human experience that throws light on 
the subject of shadows and their uses ought to 
be worth recordings What I believe to have 
been such an experience has suggested the 
theme of this chapter. In no sense do I wish 
to awaken mere curiosity concerning what are 
called occult things. The facts of this per- 
sonal experience are here set down to be 



42 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

reckoned with and to be interpreted in the 
interest of a larger spiritual life. The soul is 
far fuller of significant spiritual facts than the 
soil is of physical facts. The truth which the 
real scientist must come to see is that the 
things of the soul are even more susceptible 
to test by experience than any material thing 
is by experiment. Spiritual experiences are as 
much more important than physical exper- 
iments as the soul is more important than the 
body. Spiritual experience is as much higher 
in the range of values as the body is higher 
than the coat which covers it. Many earnest 
thinkers have failed to make that simple 
discrimination. They have lost the true per- 
spective. But lately a change is passing 
upon the minds of thoughtful men. The 
supremacy of the soul is coming more clearly 
to view. It is seen more and more that all 
of life's greatest significances are rooted in 
the infinite significance of the soul. 

It was in a little hospital, at the foot of 
the Puente Hills in southern California, 
that an unspeakably interesting experience 
came to me. It was some three or four 
days after the surgeons had cut close around 
the citadels of life. I was making good re- 
covery, was in no pain, and I was in no sense 
delirious. It was broad daylight, and I was 



THE MASTER OF THE SHADOWS 43 

fully at myself and wholly aware. There 
was no mental effort to work out a theory 
of suffering, or of life or of death. There 
was no semblance of desire or thought to 
work up a case to be exploited in the interest 
of religion. The experience was wholly un- 
sought and unanticipated. But as I recall 
that experience I think my whole immaterial 
nature was intensely subjectified. No ex- 
terior sight or sound seemed to have any de- 
tracting influence upon me. The experience 
played upon my conscious intelligence as the 
deft fingers of a harpist would play upon a 
harp. The experience itself had its inception 
in what seemed to be a dream of natural ob- 
jects, but which easily blossomed into what I 
sensed to be the supernatural. An interesting 
fact in that experience was that the natural 
disturbed me and surprised me more than did 
the supernatural. As the scientist would say, 
*T am simply stating the fact as I found it," 
and in this case as the fact found me. 

Shadows deep and dark fell in long, un- 
broken stretches across the valley. It was 
the valley at the edge of which I stood. I 
was not there by any choice of mine. There 
was a strange chill in the black fog. It was 
the intensest and most mysterious chill that 
I had ever known. A hand colder than 



44 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

common ice held firmly around my own. I 
cried out to him whom I saw not, but whose 
freezing hand I felt — "Release thy hold upon 
my hand!" He answered back, "Nay, I shall 
ne'er unloose my hold." Again and yet again 
I asked, but always came the same reply. 
That hand of more than icy chill held firm. 

Then of a sudden shone a light that chased 
the shadows far away. The fogs that had 
filled the valley fled afar. A radiance as 
white as harvest noons fell over blooming 
flowers everywhere. Aged men and women, 
glad again with youthful joy, walked smiling 
among the flowers. Gleeful girls and boys 
played in the meadow grasses jeweled with 
the dew. Garth and field were gleaming in 
the light and laughing streams leaped and 
sang among the greening hills. 

Then he who held my hand so close, when 
chill and dark were on the world, took fright, 
and as he went away he muttered this, "I 
must be gone; my power is naught when 
that light shines, and such great splendor 
burns the night away," "But stay a moment 
more," I cried. "Tell me, what is this heap 
of broken things around the valley's edge?" 
With startled voice he quickly said, "These 
are the spent torches of human leaders and 
philosophers in all ages who essayed to drive 



THE MASTER OF THE SHADOWS 45 

away the dark and chill that hung so long 
around the foggy valley's edge." By the 
light that now was streaming everywhere I 
read on battered torches the dimly written 
names of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Buddha, 
Confucius, Zoroaster, Comte, and many other 
names that men have called great. But not 
a single torch could stand the deadly dark 
that hung around the valley. It may be 
further said that I descried a little pile of 
torches that flickered and failed long, long 
before they reached the edge of the valley. 
On one of these little torches, almost faded 
out, was the name of a deluded soul who had 
a strange notion of a stranger somewhat far 
away in the high Himalaya Mountains some- 
times called the Mahatma. On another of 
the little torches was the very dim name of 
an hysterical old woman who had thought 
to get rid of the disagreeable facts of life, 
such as pain and suiffering, hy denying that 
there are any such facts. 

The victorious splendor that swallowed up 
the shadows was not from any man-made 
torch. It came not from any philosophy, nor 
science, nor art, nor creed, nor cult, but that 
un wasting splendor shone from the flaming face 
of Him at whose approach Death dropped the 
keys and fled, affrighted and defeated, far away. 



46 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

And so it was that on that autunm day, 
at the foot of the Puente Hills, the skies went 
dim above my eyes, and silence thrust a still- 
ness in my ears. My conscious self faded 
and failed. Somewhere I was, but where 
what wisest mortal mind could guess? Nor 
sight, nor sound, nor feeling, nor one thought 
was registered within that deadly dark. At 
length the deep, still shadows passed, and 
just the faintest hint of dawn came slowly 
creeping back to me across the silences of 
unremembered life. The touch of endlessness 
aroused my soul and lured me back to ponder 
and to pray. 

Then fell there on a certain day a kind 
of swoon upon my mind. But in that strange 
revealing sleep I found myself aware and 
full awake. Yet all the drapery of dreams 
was woven close about my thoughts. In this 
seeming lapse of life I surely met and van- 
quished death, or, rather, death was swal- 
lowed up by radiance of Him whose feet 
were shod with fire, and whose mighty hand 
held all the keys of darkness and of death. It is 
He, not I, who is the Master of the Shadows. 

Fear death? — to feel the fog in my throat. 

The mist in my face. 
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote 

I am nearing the place. 



THE MASTER OF THE SHADOWS 47 

The power of the night, the press of the storm. 

The post of the foe; 
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form. 

Yet the strong man must go; 
For the journey is done and the summit attained, 

And the barriers fall. 
Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained, 

The reward of it all. 
I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more. 

The best and the last! 
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore. 

And bade me creep past. 
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers. 

The heroes of old. 
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears 

Of pain, darkness, and cold. 
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave. 

The black minute's at end. 
And the element's rage, the fiend- voices that rave. 

Shall dwindle, shall blend, 
Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain. 

Then a light, then thy breast, 
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again. 

And with God be the rest! — Robert Browning. 

That is a great word which declares that 
"Death is swallowed up in victory." Other 
dark things have been swallowed up and are 
swallowed up every day. Is not the darkness 
of the night swallowed up by the brightness 
of the morning and the noon.^^ That great 
daily spectacle is not of man's devising. Every 
daybreak means that darkness has been swal- 
lowed up in the victory of light. "And there 
shall be no night there." Not of anywhere 



48 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

here is that true, but no night there. This 
is a world of many, many nights; but even 
all of these have had their stars. Somebody 
has seen the stars somewhere every night. 
Did not our Longfellow say, "In the infinite 
meadows of heaven blossomed the lovely stars 
— the forget-me-nots of the angels".^ Light is 
sown across the sky and light is sown across 
the soul. It is the victory of splendors to 
swallow up the shadows. That ought to make 
it easy for us to believe this great word about 
the swallowing up of death. Have we not 
been used to a similar sight .^^ This daily 
miracle of light ought to acquaint us with 
the greater miracle of life. 

On this very day of the springtide, as I 
write these lines, death is being swallowed up 
of life, out in the gardens and forests and 
fields — it is a familiar fact throughout the 
whole nature world. It is a part of the phys- 
ical world's program. It is a part of the 
spiritual world's program. Death is not nec- 
essary disaster. It is often a condition of the 
most splendid conquest. This is not "a vale 
of tears" because it is a world of death and 
dying. There are no tears on death's cheeks. 
Tears are for life and the living. This is 
the place for tears. Tears are a part of the 
earthly program — a part of God's earthly pro- 



THE MASTER OF THE SHADOWS 49 

gram. In all human annals it is written 
large everywhere that some of the most tear- 
ful days of history have been some of the 
most triumphant days. If this is one of 
the great facts of human experience, why 
not take it home to the heart and reckon 
with it.f^ All tears are to be wiped away, 
somewhere, some day; that is to be in the 
program farther on, but not yet. To trans- 
form tears into rainbows is another victory 
of light. As in the physical so it is in the 
spiritual, light is the Master of the Shadows. 

Last spring's living leaf is the dead leaf 
mold of to-day. But out of the leaf mold 
of to-day is surely springing the leaf life of 
to-day. One does not need to be a scientist, 
nor even a naturalist, to see that truth in 
nature. It is plainly a part of a plan for the 
tree and its life. It is an unmistakable case 
of death being swallowed up of life. If there 
is no other place in the universe where this 
gospel philosophy concerning death comes out 
and exploits itself in the open, it is perfectly 
plain that it does in this place. This shadow 
of death is certainly swallowed up of life in 
the rehabilitation of the orchard in the spring- 
time. I have heaped the ashes of dead trees 
around the roots of my roses, and have seen 
death and dissolution swallowed up in the 



50 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

life of the rosebush and transmuted into 
fragrance and beauty and bloom. It is no 
farfetched fact brought to the fore by special 
pleading to say that this swallowing up of 
death by life is almost a commonplace in 
nature processes. 

I have pressed this point because it is the 
Pauline point in his great gospel philosophy 
of the resurrection process. "Thou foolish one, 
that which thou thyself sowest is not quick- 
ened except it die.'' The larger life of the 
wheat grain is surely conditioned on its death. 
This is a saying which is at once simple and 
sublime, palpable and profound. It lies close 
enough to the surface for common minds to 
see, but it plunges into depths which are pro- 
found enough for Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, 
and our moderns, Eucken, Bergson, and Bowne. 

Our leaders of thought will some day come 
to see that the gospel philosophy speaks the 
first word on all primary questions of human 
life and experience, and that it also speaks 
the last word. Let philosophers philoso- 
phize; they help sometimes — some. But have 
they not many times "darkened counsel with 
words''.'^ If they have never shaken the temple 
of truth, have they not sometimes shaken the 
pilgrim on his way to that temple? But the 
hammer of gospel philosophy is ever driving 



THE MASTER OF THE SHADOWS 51 

some sure spike of truth to its final home 
in the human heart. 

"To die is gain.'* That is gospel philosophy. 
To say that that view is Platonic, or Buddhistic, 
or Bergsonian, or Euckenian would be to 
savor of intellectual snobbery. It is essen- 
tially gospel. Let us have as many fresh 
phrasings of the old truths as are stronger 
and clearer than the old phrasings, but we 
must keep to the gospel facts about life and 
death, else we are apt to find ourselves afloat 
with only fancies and no sure-footed facts 
about these great human experiences. 

This Pauline gospel word "gain" is not a 
negation. It is no twilight word. It shim- 
mers with the light of eternal noons. It 
sweeps the shadows from the thought of 
death. This preachment makes death a con- 
dition and not a conquest. It makes death a 
doorway of hope and not a dungeon of 
despair. The thought that death is gain is 
neither easy nor common to human theories 
nor to human philosophies. There is a large- 
ness and a light about this truth concerning 
death that bespeaks its divine source. "To 
die is gain." The word thrills with triumph. 
This teaching makes it plain that death is 
a key and not a lock. It opens to imperish- 
able values; it does not close against them. 



52 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

It is a part of a living process, it is not the 
finish of life. This is not the new teaching 
of any new philosophy. It is the gospel 
philosophy centuries old. If we were more 
familiar with this old gospel philosophy, it 
would not be so easy for us to think that 
the fresh putting of these old truths is a new 
philosophy. The new is in the literary put- 
ting. The old is in the living principle. Let 
us welcome the new putting, but let us never 
say good-by to the old principle. 

"To die is gain." Well, let us see. I think 
it will be gain in a larger freedom. Fleshly 
fetters will have fallen from the spirit. These 
handicaps of flesh and blood and bone will 
be gone. Free and easy movements will be 
unspeakably facilitated. To die will be gain 
in freedom. That is Pauline gospel philosophy. 

To die will be gain in larger outlook. There 
will be no optic windows dimmed by tear 
mist. Clouds will not blind us to the far 
visions of the eternal day. New seeing will 
have come upon the soul. The perspective 
will be perfectly proportioned. We shall see 
with unhindered vision. 

To die will be gain in growth. Spirit growth 
here is made against great odds. Earthly 
cages cramp the soul's eagle wings. Growth 
will be unhindered in that new and larger 



THE MASTER OF THE SHADOWS 53 

life. It will be growth to appreciate the 
eternal values. It will surely be growth to 
serve. It will not be growth in bulk, but in 
spiritual blessedness and beauty. It will be a 
growing from character to character. 

To die will be a gain in gladness. It will 
be a gladness of constantly increasing knowl- 
edge. It will be a gladness of constantly 
increasing strength to serve. It will be a 
gladness of constantly increasing life and love 
and of unhindered spiritual realizations. It 
will be a gladness of acquaintance and dis- 
covery. Every right joy that budded here 
will unfold in full flower and in full fruition 
there. This is no new Bergsonian progres- 
sion; it is the age-old gospel philosophy. And 
somehow the soul can sense that this Pauline 
gospel philosophy about the gain of death 
is the supreme truth about life. This glowing 
truth about death — that it is ministrant to 
life — if it take deep hold upon us, will master 
every shadow in our anticipations of death. 
Death is a part of a plan, a wide and won- 
derful plan. 

Joseph Parker called death a "visored friend." 
And that is well said. Death is but life's 
disguises in some of life's larger forms. This 
gospel view of death is beautifully put by 
Parker in a poem of his own making. The 



54 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

shadows lift when the light of this truth spreads 
over the soul. Let us hear the great preacher- 
poet speak his word of interpretation: 

I had an interview with Death — 

The place, a lonely dell, winter-bound, swathed in spotless 

snow; 
The time, new-risen morn; the last star, paling 
As if in fear, retired but not extinguished. 
A spirit strengthened me to brave the enemy of life. 
And gave me courage to upbraid his cruelty; 
My speech I do remember well, and Death's reply. 

Said I, in heightened tone, as if to keep uncertain 

Courage steadfast and ardent: "Monster, of thee 

No man speaks well; thy silent tread makes 

The house tremble, and in thy cold breath all 

Flowers die. No little child is safe from 

Thy all-withering touch; nor mothers 

Dost thou spare, nor lovers weaving life's story 

Into colored dream, nor saints in lowly prayer. 

Why not content thyself with warring and succeeding 

In the gloomy jungle? — smite the tiger crouching 

For his prey, or the lion in his fierceness. 

Or fly after the panting wolf, or lodge 

An arrow in the heart of the proud eagle. 

Why devastate our homes? Why kill our little ones? 

Why break our hearts and mock our thirst 

With the brine of useless tears? O Death! I would 

That thou wert dead." 

Then Death answered me, and filled me with amaze: 
"Believe me," said the weird defendant, "thy reasoning 
Is false, and the reproach an unintelligent assault." 

His voice was gentle, and through all his pallor 
There gleamed the outline of a smile; I saw 
Transfigured Death! 



THE MASTER OF THE SHADOWS 55 

"I am God's servant; the flock must be brought home: 

I go to bring the wanderers to the fold. 

The lambs are God's, not yours, or yours but to 

Watch and tend until he sends for them; 

Through your own fatherhood read God's heart. 

Through your own watching for the child's return 

Conceive the thought that glows in love divine.'* 

He paused. Said I: "Could not some brighter 

Messenger be sent? An angel with sunlight in 

His eyes and music in his voice? Thou dost 

Affright us so, and make us die so oft in 

Dying once. If our mother could but come, or some 

Kindred soul — or old pastor whose voice 

We know — any but thou, so cold, so grim!" 

"I understand thee well," said Death; "but thou dost not 
Understand thyself. Why does God send this cold snow 
Before the spring? Why icebergs first, then daffodils? 
My grimness, too, thou dost not comprehend; 
The living have never seen me, only the dying 
Can see death. I am but a mask; the angel thou 
Dost pine for is behind; sometimes angel-mother. 
Sometimes father, sometimes a vanished love. 
But always to the Good and True the very image of the 
Christ. No more revile me, I am a visored friend." 

The dell was then transformed; the snow gleamed 
Like silver — the day a cloudless blue, and 
Suddenly living images filled the translucent space; 
And then I asked of Death if he could tell whence 
Came they. And he said: "These are mine, 
A reaper I, as well as shepherd. I put in the sharp sickle, 
I bound the sheaves, I garnered the precious harvest. 
And when I come angels sing, 'Harvest home.' " 

That the dark things of human experience 
are called into the high and holy service of 



56 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

the soul, and that the shadows are mastered 
by the unquenchable light of the eternal love 
— ^those are the comforting truths. The agnos- 
tic, the materialist, the sensualist never sight 
those truths. Among unlifting shadows they 
stumble on. They have not caught the gleam 
of that eternal light that shines across these 
earthly vales and hills. They have not yet 
learned that life's shadows are not to be mas- 
tered from the human side. The shadows will 
never be mastered by philosophies, nor cults, 
nor creeds, nor even by psychologies, but by 
the life of Him who is the light of every man 
that Cometh into the world. He is the Master 
of the Shadows. 

Any study of sorrow and its shadows which 
does not make clear the usefulness of it all 
to human life is an inadequate study. Sor- 
rows and their shadows may be woven into 
supreme services. Light breaks in and masters 
the shadows the moment we see their high 
service to the soul. We have misread human 
history if we have not seen that out of the 
shadows of suffering have sprung the great 
literatures, the great paintings, the great 
melodies, the great discoveries, the great in- 
ventions, the great philosophies, the great 
sciences, the great civilizations. All of them 
have blossomed into the light out of the shad- 



THE MASTER OF THE SHADOWS 57 

ows of suffering. On his human side the 
perfection of the perfect man was wrought by 
suffering. This is the philosophy of faith 
which bravely faces the facts of life. It is 
constructive and not destructive, it is affirm- 
ative and not a negation. In the light of 
this truth the shadows flee away. If we can 
see that sorrows of earthly origin are put 
to heavenly uses, we may catch sight of a 
supreme sanity in it all. We need to see the 
rainbow side of the cloud. That is what an 
Egyptian prince saw when he said to his 
brothers who had betrayed him, "Ye meant 
it for evil, but God meant it for good." The 
river may carry many defilements till it takes 
its final plunge into the purifying sea. The 
divine transmutation of human sorrow is the 
gospel philosophy. It is sure that this earthly 
life is a school and that Sorrow is a divinely 
appointed teacher in that school. 

"I walked a mile with Pleasure, 
She chattered all the way; 
But left me none the wiser 
For all she had to say. 

"I walked a mile with Sorrow, 
And ne'er a word said she; 
But, O, the things I learned from her 
When Sorrow walked with me." 

No mere negative view of death can hold the 
most significant truth about that fact. As the 



58 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

greatest solaces have the greatest sorrows for back- 
ground, so the full-length portrait of life must be 
painted on the negative background of death. 

The dark pigment is out of place if it be 
in the foreground of the picture. It must 
be in the background. There will still be 
shadows in the picture, but they will be of 
service to bring out the high-lights. The 
shadow will play its part in the picture's 
proportions. The shadow will be mastered by 
being used. Or, to vary the figure, like some 
wild beast of the jungle the shadow will be 
kept "at bay" by the undying camp fires of 
this gospel faith. 

All of this truth about the place and min- 
istry of the shadow is set in a beautiful song 
by Katharine Lee Bates, and is titled "Yes- 
terday's Grief." Let us sing it together: 

The rain that fell a-yesterday is ruby on the roses. 
Silver on the poplar leaf, and gold on willow-stem; 

The grief that chanced a-yesterday is silence that incloses 
Holy loves where time and change shall never trouble them. 

The rain that fell a-yesterday makes all the hillside glisten. 

Coral on the laurel and beryl on the grass; 
The grief that chanced a-yesterday has taught the soul to 
listen 

For whispers of eternity in all the winds that pass. 

O faint-of-heart, storm-beaten, this rain will gleam to-morrow. 
Flame within the columbine and jewels on the thorn. 

Heaven in the forget-me-not; though sorrow now be sorrow. 
Yet sorrow shall be beauty in the magic of the morn. 



THE SCARECROWS OF LIFE 

I will trust, and not be afraid. — Prophet Isaiah. 

K hopes were dupes, fears may be liars. — A. H. Clough. 

The thing in the world I am most afraid of is fear, and with 
good reason, since that passion, in the trouble it causes, exceeds 
all other accidents. — Montaigne, 

We are all familiar with the fears of life. 
Almost everybody is afraid of something. 
We are afraid of sickness and sorrow. We 
are afraid of disaster, disease, and death. 
We are afraid of disappointments. If we have 
not been disappointed, we are afraid we will 
be. If nothing dreadful has happened to us, 
we are afraid it will happen. Now, we ought 
to remember that the most fearful thing in 
this whole ghostly list of fears is our own 
fearfulness. 

The most of the scarecrows of life are like 
the scarecrows in the old-fashioned garden — 
they are only a bluff; there is nothing in them 
to be feared. No wise bird was ever much 
frightened at those dead scarecrows in the 
garden. Our children are afraid of the dark, 
and their fathers and mothers are afraid of 
other things quite as unsubstantial as the 
darkness. A shadow has never hurt any- 
body, but the fear of a shadow has. 

59 



60 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take; 

The clouds ye so much dread 
Are big with mercy, and shall break 

In blessings on your head. 

To the heart of courage "the lions in the 
way" are all tied, save such as hope may har- 
ness to serve our needs. Battles are never won 
by fear, but by faith. No man ever won a race 
by being afraid to start. We never had learned 
to swim had we stood forever on the bank 
shivering with fear. We had to plunge in. 
Hesitancy is not a characteristic of heroes. 

In recent years the press was telling us 
that in some places Halley's comet created 
a stampede among scores of superstitious 
people. Some were prostrated and sickened 
with terror. Some were frightened into in- 
sanity, and others were so badly scared that 
they were driven to suicide. The news-gath- 
erers told us that in some parts of the world 
people were expecting the comet to smash 
the earth to fragments. In some towns mes- 
sengers went through the streets blowing horns 
to remind the terrified inhabitants that the 
world was about to come to an end. Expecta- 
tion that the world would be burned up by 
the comet caused some people to confess 
murder and other crimes of which no one 
had supposed them guilty. 



THE SCARECROWS OF LIFE 61 

A dignified New York editor told us in his 
journal that men in some sections of the 
country ordered their coffins when the comet 
appeared, and some even dropped dead at 
the sight of it. Now, that comet did not 
hurt anybody, but the fear of the comet did. 
I would rather be killed by a comet than to 
be killed by the fear of a comet. There 
would be more dignity in it, and it would 
not be half so humiliating to one's friends. 

We are told on good authority that in 1888, 
when the yellow fever epidemic visited Jack- 
sonville, Florida, many died from fear lest 
they might die of yellow fever. Fear is as 
fatal as fever when it gets a good hold. 

It is reported that in recent years a certain 
reputable magazine had twenty-five hundred 
persons interviewed and it was found that 
they had seven thousand fears. One man 
feared that he would lose his position, another 
feared that he would not get one, another 
was afraid of poverty, another of contagion, 
another of sickness, and another that he 
might be buried alive. But the interviewer 
reported that each of the twenty-five hundred 
persons had some sort of distressing fear. 
Who can estimate the repose and happiness 
that would have come to those twenty-five 
hundred fearful folk if they had only gotten 



62 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

close enough to God to find out that he can 
be trusted? "7 will trust, and not be afraid/' 
Let us venture on that. In that way Hes help. 

Intelligent faith in God is the only antidote 
for our foolish fears. We must keep that fire 
burning at any cost. Sunset time is coming 
to us all, but if we keep the torch of faith 
aflame, then "At eventime it shall be light." 
If faith dies, all of our songs will turn into 
sobs. Even at the price of infinite pain it will 
pay to keep that fire burning. 

Some time ago the newspapers were telling 
us of Mr. M. A. Mahoney's experience with 
hungry wolves in the Northland. On his way 
from Fairbanks to Valdez, Alaska, accom- 
panied by his dogs, he was pursued by a 
pack of hungry wolves. He lighted a huge 
fire at night to keep them at bay. But in 
spite of this the beasts crept closer and closer 
to the traveler, as he guarded the body of 
his companion who had died on the way. 
Mr. Mahoney was obliged to battle against 
sleep as well as to keep the camp fire from 
dying down. The one supreme thing was to 
keep the fire burning. He knew that it was 
dangerous to sleep, and to prevent it, night 
after night, he tied a burning pine-knot to his 
arm, and when the flame crept close enough to 
hurt he got up and replenished the fire. This 



THE SCARECROWS OF LIFE 63 

he did for three successive nights till he reached 
a place of safety. To keep that fire burning 
was his only salvation. And it is only the 
fire of faith that will keep away the wolves 
of fear. "7 will trust, and not be afraid,'* 

There may be thousands of phases of fear, 
but there are three outstanding fears with 
which all men have been more or less familiar. 
There is the fear of disease. We have all 
had that, either with reference to ourselves 
or with reference to some one we have loved. 
More than once that fear has stolen our slum- 
ber. No one of us has been able to master 
any fear that has ever obsessed us till we 
could truthfully say, "I will trust, and not be 
afraid." And why should we be afraid of 
anything that God can master.^ He is the 
master of all our sicknesses. That is not say- 
ing that some sickness will not some day be 
the means of our taking away. But the truth 
is that if God can call physical sicknesses into 
the service of the soul, it may be a greater service 
to the soul than it would be to cure the sicknesses. 
And is not this the preachment of Paul.?* It 
was that prince of apostles who said, "Our 
light afflictions work for us." And if they 
work for us, are they not the servants of the 
soul? That is the great and glorious gospel 
philosophy concerning the sicknesses and sor- 



64 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

rows of life. That is the only philosophy 
which can break the sullen spell of humanity's 
sorrows. God did not take away Paul's thorn; 
he did better — ^he mastered that thorn and 
made it Paul's servant. The ministry of 
thorns has often been a greater ministry to 
man than the ministry of thrones. "The 
Ministry of Thorns" — let some poet weave 
that significant theme into the soul's epic. 

If we fear disease, it is because we shrink 
from the pain it implies, or because we dread 
the failure which we think will surely follow 
disease. But hope has a way of following 
often on the footsteps of despair. We would 
not shrink so from disease if we could foresee 
it as a possible condition of greater mental 
and spiritual conquests than any we have 
hitherto known. But there is an overbrooding 
Wisdom and Mercy and Power that again 
and again has harnessed all manner of sick- 
nesses and sufferings into the service of the 
soul. Take a few simple illustrations of this 
fact: My friend asked Mr. Ira D. Sankey, 
after that great gospel singer had lost his 
sight, if God did not seem nearer to him in 
the days of his prime, when he was singing to 
enraptured multitudes, than he did in these 
days of blindness. The singer promptly replied, 
"God was near then, but he is nearer now." 



THE SCARECROWS OF LIFE 65 

God did not take away Fanny Crosby's 
disease of blindness, but he mastered it and 
made it a servant to ber singing soul. Even 
lately, she has told the world that she thanks 
God for the blessing of blindness. May not 
using disease as a condition of helpful ministry 
to humanity be a greater mastery than simply 
curing it? When Frances Ridley Havergal's 
mother suggested that the poem which her 
daughter had written might be improved, that 
sufferer said, "Wait, mother, till the next 
paroxysm of pain is over, and the song will 
be sweeter." And is it not true that pain 
has sweetened many a song.^ So it is that 
God may do one of two things with our 
diseases: he may cure them if he will, or he 
may transform them into servants of the 
soul. In either case he is the master of disease. 
The use that God is able to make of disease 
may be a far greater thing than the mere 
cure of disease. The reason the princely 
apostle gloried in infirmities was because of 
the immense usefulness of certain weak- 
nesses. "When I am weak, then am I strong." 
That is surely a great truth paradoxically 
put. The appeal of a baby's weakness is 
more useful to mankind than the spectacu- 
lar strength of battleships. In any event dis- 
ease may be cured, or it may be conquered 



66 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

into a servant. "/ vrlll trusty and not be 
afraid.'* 

Many are greatly troubled by fears of 
disappointment. This may be called antic- 
ipatory fear. I am persuaded that it is a 
"scarecrow" that stands to-day in many of 
our gardens. But, in truth, have not our 
fears of disappointments often bothered us 
more than the disappointments themselves? 

I think we can all remember that in many 
instances the disappointments of childhood were 
caused by the disallowance of parents. It 
did not please them to deny us and to disap- 
point us, but the denial and disappointment of 
childhood brought help and happiness to our 
manhood. All of this, in certain cases, the 
wisdom of our parents could foresee. Im- 
patient childhood sought only the pleasure 
of the moment. Was it not a great disap- 
pointment to us to be sent to school when we 
had laid all of our plans to stay at home and 
play.f^ But that schooling, which occasioned 
the child's disappointment, has brought many 
a happy and successful day to manhood. Had 
we been wiser, those childish disappointments 
would never have awakened our foolish fears. 
Disappointments are often the furnace fires 
that gloss into beauty the vases of life. How 
often our disappointments have been like 



THE SCARECROWS OF LIFE 67 

blustering winds that have swept the skies 
of life clear of clouds! Many of our disap- 
pointments have been but the Celestial Sur- 
geon's instruments cutting away the deadly 
disease of selfishness. In the high-lights of 
eternity's to-morrow I think this will be the 
outstanding truth about the most of our 
earthly disappointments. "7 will trust, and not 
be afraid'' — of disappointments. 

"I do not ask that flowers should always spring 
Beneath my feet; 
I know too well the poison and the sting 
Of things too sweet." 

Perhaps the one great fear that we have 
all, at some time in life, sighted from afar is 
the fear of death. The greatest Book in the 
world declares that some people are all their 
lifetime in "bondage through fear of death." 
That is like walking at high noon atremble 
with fear at the thought of sundown. That 
fear would fade all the flowers and spoil all 
the laughter of life. It would be like a worm 
eating at the heart of every ripening joy. 
Death is only a pause in a dressing room for 
a change of raiment to go into the gardens 
of God. But a change to better garments has 
never been wont to frighten us. Death is 
only a "rest" in the song. The Music Master 
will wave his baton in a moment and set us 



68 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

to singing in the full chorus. "Though I 
walk through the valley of the shadow of 
death, I will fear no evil." No, no, we are not 
like little children afraid of the dark. We have 
seen a great light that shall drink away the dark. 
We shall go singing into the shadows, and as we 
sing the shadows shall fade and fade away. 

There is hardly any greater achievement 
possible to a man than to go singing and 
serving through life. To be glad and unafraid 
— ^that condition of heart and mind will put 
us at our best. We would as well be eaten 
up of wolves as to be eaten up of fears. Let 
us away with them. There is more to be glad 
about than there is to be sad about. There 
are a thousand reasons for faith where there 
is only one reason for fear. The sun can 
weave the blackest clouds into rainbows — 
and so can a fearless and hopeful heart. 

O heart of mine, we shouldn't worry so. 
What we've missed of calm we couldn't have, you know; 
What we've met of stormy pain. 
And of sorrow's driving rain. 
We can better meet again. 
If it blow. 

We have erred in that dark hour we have known. 
When our tears fell with the shower all alone; 
Were not shine and shadow blent. 
As the gracious Master meant? 
Let us temper our content 
With his own. 



THE SCARECROWS OF LIFE 69 

For we know not every morrow can be sad. 
Then, forgetting all the sorrows we have had. 
Let us fold away our fears. 
And put by our foolish tears. 
And through all the coming years. 

Just be glad. — James Wkitcomb Riley. 



n 

THE SKYWARD LOOK FROM 
LITERATURE 



71 



The first thing we want for the sake of a great literature 
and a great poetry is a noble religion which will bear, by its 
immaterial truths, our intellect, conscience, emotions, imagi- 
nation, and spirit beyond this worid; and yet, by those very 
truths, set us into the keenest activity in the worid for the 
bettering of the worid. — Stafford A. Brooke, 



72 



SONGS ACROSS THE STORM 

A HARP stood in the moveless air. 

Where showers of sunshine washed a thou- 
sand fragrant blooms; 
A traveler bowed with loads of care 

Essayed from morning till the dusk of eve- 
ning glooms 
To thrum sweet sounds from songless strings; 
The pilgrim strives in vain with each un- 
answering chord. 
Until the tempest's thunder sings. 

And, moving on the storm, the fingers of 
the Lord 
A wondrous melody awakes; 

And though the battling winds their soldier 
deeds perform. 
Their trumpet-sound brave music makes. 

While God's assuring voice sings love across 
the storm. 



73 



THE SOUL IN TENNYSON'S 
MASTERPIECE 

The wish, that of the living whole 
No life may fail beyond the grave — 
Derives it not from what we have 

The likest God within the soul? 

— In Memoriam. 

Our eyes are often blind until sorrow strikes 
off the scales. Tears are telescopes through 
which appear the rainbow arches of love. 
Tennyson sees through terrestrial troubles to 
celestial triumphs. An awful sorrow had struck 
him moaning to the earth. It seemed as if 
he never could sing again. Flung to the 
earth like a mortally wounded rider, his heart 
was utterly imhorsed. The burning dust of 
despair blistered his lyrical lips. If another 
day should dawn, its sky would be sunless. 
If another night should fall, its brooding 
blackness would bend above him without a 
star. If another spring should walk across 
the fields, it would be songless and flowerless. 
Sorrow had come full sway upon his soul. 
For once his magic muse had wholly hushed, 
but not for long, thank God, not for long. 

How the soul behaves itself in supreme 
sorrow — that is exponential of its quality. 

74 



THE SOUL 75 

How do you meet the sorrows of life? The 
answer constitutes the measure of a man. 
Do you look skyward or earthward when the 
storm strikes. That will tell the tale of 
victory or defeat. Here is a great soul stoop- 
ing under a mighty sorrow. Great souls have 
great sorrows. Shallow souls never take the 
soundings of the deepest seas. Tennyson 
sounded the deeps. Lincoln said, "If any 
man out of perdition suffers more than I do, 
I pity him." And Jesus — but we must not 
speak of his sufferings here. They are un- 
matched in the misereres of mankind. Great- 
ness greatly suffers. It may save others; it- 
self it cannot save. But what is Tennyson 
doing.f^ A moment ago, save for his sobbings, 
we hardly thought him alive. Grief had well- 
nigh slain this giant soul. A moment ago a 
wordless woe hung on his heart like a black 
night. What will such a soul as Tennyson 
do with such a sorrow as his.^^ Listen: he will 
make his misery into music. Not in self-pity 
will he sing, but he will comfort others by 
that comfort wherewith he himself has been 
comforted of God. He is not sobbing now, 
he is singing, and it is a song for the ages: 

Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 

Whom we, that have not seen thy face. 
By faith, and faith alone, embrace. 

Believing where we cannot prove; 



76 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

Thine are these orbs of light and shade; 

Thou madest Life in man and brute; 

Thou madest Death, and lo, thy foot 
Is on the skull which thou hast made. 

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust: 
Thou madest man, he knows not why. 
He thinks he was not made to die: 

And thou hast made him: thou art just. 

Thou seemest human and divine. 
The highest, holiest manhood, thou: 
Our wills are ours, we know not how; 

Our wills are ours, to make them thine. 

No sorrow can smother the soul that looks 
up and sings like that. That is the sky song 
of the soul. "Thou wilt not leave us in the 
dust" — that is the note which gives immortal 
sweetness to this song. It is no ditty of the 
dust. It is a sky song. Mankind will make 
any man laureate who will sing like that. 
We must ever hear some voice like that sing- 
ing through our battle smoke, or we shall 
never win our battles. The dismal dirge of 
the poor old monk who kept saying, "Brothers, 
we must all die," will not help us to live. If 
we take care of life, life will take care of death. 
Life is our main business. There is neither 
lift nor life in the song or preachment that 
ends in the dust. Contrast Tennyson's splen- 
did slogan of life with Omar's song of the 
dust Notice how the heart's temperature goes 
down in this sad song of Omar: 



THE SOUL 77 

Myself when young did eagerly frequent 
Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument 

About it and about; but evermore 
Came out by the same door wherein I went. 

With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow. 

And with mine own hand wrought to make it grow; 

And this was all the Harvest that I reaped — 
"I came like Water, and like Wind I go." 

Into this Universe, and why not knowing 
Nor whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing; 
And out of it, as Wind along the Waste, 
I know not whither, willy-nilly blowing. 

This sounds like the moaning of the winter 
wind around the chimney top when the fire 
in the grate is out. In this song there is 
surely no solace for life's sorrows. There is 
no healing here for our heart- wounds. There 
is nothing here to rally us again when the 
battle has gone against us. This literature 
capitalizes such words as "water," "wind," 
"waste." Here they are in Omar's song on 
the page before me. But the great words 
in Tennyson's "In Memoriam" are "life," 
"love," "duty," "destiny," "God." Here is a 
meaning that catches "the far-off interest of 
tears." The underswell of the soul's im- 
mortal sea is here. Here are eternal tones 
that sound across the long centuries of the 
soul. Breaking over these skies is an eternal 
day that swallows up all the brooding nights 



78 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

of earth. All the way through these lyrical 
mountains of Tennyson we are walking with 
one who, with unerring certainty, triumphantly 
threads his way through the tangled thickets 
of the dark. The deeper grows the dark, the 
clearer sounds his call. He has seen a great 
light, and we feel the floodings of his faith. 

Tennyson sets his sorrow to music and 
sings a mighty song. The eye of Hallam has 
faded, the voice of Hallam is hushed, the 
body of Hallam is dead and cold, but love 
will keep his love alive forevermore. Had not 
Hallam died when he did and as he did, how 
could Tennyson ever have given us this master- 
piece of "In Memoriam".f^ It has always 
taken poniards of pain to find the deepest 
fountains of song. Was he not a great poet 
himself who said of the poet that he learns 
in sorrow what he teaches in song.f^ No 
supreme song has ever been written by any 
singer who has not first felt the furnace flames 
of some supreme sorrow. Would you find the 
poet's flame? You must walk through the 
poet's fire. The King's question to candidates 
for coronation is, "Can you indeed be bap- 
tized with the baptism that I am baptized 
with?" Supreme suffering — that is the price 
of supreme song. Tennyson paid that price. 
It is a sort of soliloquy of the soul. He is 



THE SOUL 79 

talking to his own heart about high and eternal 
things, and, happy for us, we have overheard 
him talking. We have had our sorrows too, 
and the ache of our breaking hearts has forced 
us to eavesdrop a little at the gateways of 
eternal song. We have pushed our way to 
the edge of the dark and we have heard God 
speaking his sweet solaces to select but 
stricken souls. Had we not caught that com- 
fort, our hearts had held their awful ache 
forever. Thank God, we have been at the 
gateway of eternal goodness with Tennyson, 
and we have heard God speaking to his suffer- 
ing soul, and that tender speech is also for us. 
Toys and trinkets are easily won, but the 
greatest things are greatly bought. The top- 
most place of power is always bought with 
blood. You may have the pinnacles if you 
have enough blood to pay. "Without the 
shedding of blood there is no remission." 
That is the conquest condition of the holy 
heights everywhere. The story of the real her- 
oisms everywhere is the story of sacrificial blood. 
The chiefest values in life and character are not 
blown across our way by vagrant winds. 

"Great truths are dearly bought. The common truth. 
Such as men give and take from day to day, 
Comes in the common walk of easy life. 

Blown by the careless wind, across our way. 



80 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

"Great truths are greatly won, not found by chance, 
Nor wafted on the breath of summer dream; 
But grasped in the great struggle of the soul. 
Hard buffeting with adverse wind and stream. 

"But in the day of conflict, fear, and grief. 

When the strong hand of God, put forth in might, 
Plows up the subsoil of the stagnant heart. 

And brings the imprisoned truth seed to the light. 

"Wrung from the troubled spirit, in hard hours 
Of weakness, solitude, perchance of pain. 
Truth springs like harvest from the well-plowed field. 
And the soul feels it has not wept in vain." 

"In Memoriam" shows us a great soul 
looking skyward out of a stupendous sorrow. 
It is no mere writhings of "a worm of the 
dust." An eagle has been swept down from 
his high circlings in the sky into the drenched 
dust of the earth; he has staggered to his 
feet again and is preening his wings to fly — 
ay, he is flying now far higher than he flew 
before the storm. He is at home now amid 
the thunder-throated voices of the mountains. 

This sublime song of Tennyson is proof 
that the skyward-looking soul has sensed 
more spiritual realities than mere intellectual 
faculties have ever found. And is not spirit- 
ually sensing things one way of knowing them.^ 
There is more than one way of knowing. 
Even the gross world of matter may be known 
in any one of five ways, at least. We may 



THE SOUL 81 

see it, touch it, smell it, hear it, taste it. A 
still finer world, but just as real, is known 
mathematically, musically, artistically, intel- 
lectually. Another world that is finer yet is 
known by faith, by hope, by love. Let us 
not falter here. Let us use the word "know." 
The spiritual world can be known by the 
spirit of man. Let us give this world of 
spirituality a chance at us. Let us give our- 
selves a chance at this spiritual world. 

There are three worlds in this world. There 
is the world of matter, the world of mind, 
the world of spirit. What could be wiser 
and more beautiful than to have a definite 
way of distinctly knowing each of these worlds .^^ 
We know the physical world physically, the 
mental world mentally, the spiritual world 
spiritually. But we know only according as 
we give ourselves a chance to know. We do 
not know beauty by closing our eyes. We 
do not know music by stopping our ears. 
We cannot know light by pulling down all 
the window blinds. We can never know the 
spiritual world by shutting it out. The airs 
of a spiritual world are blowing through this 
sublime song of Tennyson. If we open all 
the doors and windows, we are sure to feel 
the winds blowing from some eternal sea. 

This recognition of the three worlds — ma- 



82 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

terial, mental, spiritual — which Tennyson is 
constantly dealing with, and which we must 
all deal with, if we live our life in the large, 
will swing the whole sublime panorama of 
life into some sort of system. This view 
will reduce to a minimum the jumbled-up look 
of things. There are three worlds, and we 
may have some genuine knowledge of each, 
though we may know only "in part." We may 
see the road as far as the lantern throws the 
light, and that is better than not seeing at all. 

The brainiest bewilderments of mere intel- 
lectualism have arisen out of the failure to 
discriminate between these three worlds. No 
man can see any one of them right till he 
sees it in right relationship to the others. 
No man knows anything as he ought till he 
knows that thing in its relationships. "Know 
thj^self." Yes, but a man must know some- 
thing of three worlds to know anything of 
himself. Again and again this meaning emerges 
from the deeps of Tennyson's "In Memoriam." 
It is at the very heart of this brimming 
message. 

See how this prophet of song symbols the 
fresh hope that comes to his soul, by the 
spring beauty of the material world. Indeed, 
the three worlds which we have been con- 
sidering are beautifully interblended here: 



THE SOUL 83 

Now fades the last long streak of snow. 
Now burgeons every maze of quick 
About the flowering squares, and thick 

By ashen roots the violets blow. 

Now rings the woodland loud and long. 
The distance takes a lovelier hue. 
And drowned in yonder living blue 

The lark becomes a sightless song. 

Now dance the lights on lawn and lea. 
The flocks are whiter down the vale. 
And milkier every milky sail 

On winding stream or distant sea; 

Where now the seamew pipes, or dives 
In yonder greening gleam, and fly 
The happy birds, that change their sky 

To build and brood; that live their lives 

From land to land; and in my breast 
Spring wakens too; and my regret 
Becomes an April violet. 

And buds and blossoms like the rest. 

"And in my breast spring wakens too." 
Here are the two worlds of matter and spirit. 
Here is springtide in the material world and 
springtide in the soul. To Tennyson the one 
is as real as the other. Tennyson's uses of 
symbols from the material world to set home 
the significance of experiences of the mental 
and spiritual worlds are in evidence all through 
this masterpiece. He shows a fine feeling 
of familiarity with them all. Nothing more 
clearly shows his large intelligence than his 



84 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

constant recognition of the similarities as well 
as dissimilarities of these three worlds. The 
point here is that, in this peerless poem, he 
treats these three worlds as equally real. This 
is not to say that he treats them as of equal 
value. He does not mix his measurements 
here. He keeps them properly proportioned 
all the way through. But keeping this fine 
balance and proportion is the very thing in 
which many great philosophers and scientists 
have failed. Did Huxley, Tyndall, Spencer 
keep the balance? With splendid intellectual 
mastery Tennyson keeps it all the way through. 
But he keeps also the gradation of great- 
ness. He steadily and surely ascends from 
the foothills of the material to the swimming 
summits of the spiritual. When we find our 
way to the central fires of the spirit that 
breathes through this great creation, we feel 
that there is such disparity between the soul's 
loves and longings and their earthly realiza- 
tions that there must be for us some time and 
somewhere more than we shall ever find in 
this little round of earthly years. We feel 
the mighty meaning in this message that the 
soul of man has "Drawn from out the bound- 
less deep" and must "Turn again home." 
Tennyson teaches plainly that life itself should 
teach us the endlessness of life. Hear this: 



THE SOUL 85 

My own dim life should teach me this. 
That life shall live forevermore. 
Else earth is darkness at the core» 

And dust and ashes all that is. 

This man has leaned his listening soul 
against the gates of morning. He has surely 
caught the splendor of the soul's sunrise. 
As Hugo said, "The tomb is not a blind alley; 
it closes with the twilight, but opens with the 
dawn." Let us make it irrevocably sure that 
death and darkness are not the soul's destiny. 
The dawn light is on the hills. 

So be it; there no shade can last 
In that dee'p dawn behind the tomb. 
But clear from marge to marge shall bloom 

The eternal landscape of the past. 

The tremendous spiritual reach and urgency 
of *Tn Memoriam" is in itself of great sig- 
nificance — not of mathematical significance, nor 
scientific significance, nor philosophical sig- 
nificance, nor theological significance, as such, 
but spiritual significance. It is the living 
vine of the human spirit feeling its way up 
the towering trellis of eternal life. The vast- 
ness of our yearnings is prophecy of things 
for which we yearn. The upward leanings of 
the inner life are significant of eternal life. 
There is not enough in our outer world here 
to match the mighty meanings of our inner 



86 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

world. The far-off callings of eternity may 
fall faint upon our earthly ears, but the whis- 
pers of eternity are as real as the thunder- 
peals of time. The lift of some sublime to- 
morrow is drawing on our lives to-day. We 
shall keep climbing 

Upon the great world's altar-stairs 
That slope through darkness up to God. 



SHAKESPEARE AND THE SOUL 

What your heart thinks great, is great. 
The soul's emphasis is always right. 

— Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

When God puts a special stamp on a soul 
that soul is intended to pass current in all 
kingdoms. Such a soul was William Shake- 
speare, who was born in 1564. And, as the 
world's way is, it neither knew him nor appre- 
ciated him till, on the anniversary of his birth, 
April 23, 1616, his wondrous harp fell from 
his nerveless hand and his magic lips forever 
ceased to sing. But he could not be hid. 
Light is revelatory. Shakespeare was a literary 
and spiritual sunburst. A thrill went across 
the literary mind of the world when Shake- 
speare struck the keynote of his song. His 
wide and deep influence could not be kept in 
small compass. He was sent with a world- 
message to the world. He could not be local, 
sectional, or sectarian. 

As "There was a man sent from God 
whose name was John," so, though in a 
lesser sense, there was a man sent from 
God whose name was William Shakespeare. 
Indeed, is there not some sense in which 

87 



88 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

every man is sent from God? But the moun- 
tain trails of human history are full of the 
footprints of God's special messengers bearing 
special messages. Mozart, Beethoven, Wag- 
ner, and all musical masters were sent from 
God. The supreme artists of beauty, Raphael, 
Angelo, Turner, Tissot, and Hofmann, as well 
as others, were sent from God. Will anyone 
dare to say that Spenser, who wrote the 
"Faerie Queene," that Dante, who wrote the 
"Divine Comedy," that Milton, who wrote 
"Paradise Lost," that John Bunyan, who wrote 
the immortal allegory in Bedford jail, that 
Alfred Tennyson, who wrote "In Memoriam," 
were not men sent from God? Are not all 
great statesmen sent from God? Was there 
not a man sent from God to unite the scat- 
tered states of Germany, and whose name was 
Bismarck? Was not Garibaldi sent from God 
to break the temporal power of the Roman 
hierarchy in Italy? Who called Washington 
to be the "father of his country"? And surely 
there was a man sent from God whose name 
was Abraham Lincoln. He sends the great 
reformers. Did God not send Luther to cry, 
"The just shall live by faith"? Did he not 
repreach that great Pauline message? There 
was a man sent from God whose name was 
Savonarola. God sent John Knox to cry. 



SHAKESPEARE AND THE SOUL 89 

"Give me Scotland, or I die." And did not 
God send John Wesley, who said, "The world 
is my parish"? At every turning point in the 
world's history we have come upon this great 
truth. And this is what I claim for Shake- 
speare — that he was a man sent from God. 
The claim here made has to do with faculties 
and gifts which are the divine equipment of 
genius. The genius himself must be held re- 
sponsible as any other rational man, not only 
for faithful and efficient service to mankind, 
but for the quality of his own personal life 
and character. 

In the persistence and power of Shakespeare's 
genius he all but touches the verge of the 
supernatural. It is no wonder that we feel 
like calling him the "myriad-minded man." 
The average man sees life segmentarily. 
Shakespeare sees its full circle. His literary 
output sweeps from the center to the far-flung 
circumference of human nature. Yet he is 
simple, natural, historically accurate. He is 
scientifically truthful and up to the date of 
his day. He gives us the finest features of 
romance. His wit is lightning keen. His phil- 
osophy is profound. His metaphysics searches 
the very secrets of the soul. His imagery drips 
poetry as flowers drip dew. In thought, in 
spirit, in form and finish of literary expression 



go OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

his work shows him to have been and still 
to be the literary master of the world. 

Shakespeare was also a genius in assimila- 
tion. He could touch anything to newness 
and to beauty. He assimilated the creations 
of others as a living tree assimilates leaf mold, 
transmuting it to sap, fiber, blossom, and fruit. 
But the soul of Shakespeare's message is to the 
soul and about the soul. And it is his treat- 
ment of this supreme subject that gives him the 
topmost place in literary power and expression. 

He was original in the uses and arrange- 
ments of that which he borrowed. The bee 
gathers honey from fields not its own, but 
stored in the hive it is the bee's honey. That 
is Shakespeare's originality in the use and 
arrangement of other men's materials. Even 
from the fields of noxious weeds he could ex- 
tract the finest honey. Shakespeare held the 
key that unlocked the hitherto unsung and un- 
said secrets of nature and human nature. 
Naked rocks as cold as steel flashed fire when 
he touched them with his wizard wand. Cen- 
turies of silence sang their secrets when he 
thrummed their sleeping strings. The stars 
rained fire when he looked their way. Like 
the gods of Homer, under the flashlight of 
Shakespeare's genius the souls of men stride 
across sky- wide spaces at a step. 



SHAKESPEARE AND THE SOUL 91 

Any human thought was better by becom- 
ing his. If he borrowed from older works his 
best materials, it was as a rose borrows from 
the soil, the air, and the sunshine the elements 
which its peculiar life transmutes into attar 
and beauty. It is a mystery to be spiritually 
felt and not intellectually found. If he bor- 
rowed from Bruno, Holinshed, Plutarch, Boc- 
caccio, Chaucer, and whom not, the material he 
borrowed was, by his kaleidoscopic versatility, 
polished, beautified, sweetened, enriched, and 
multitudinously magnified. There is scarcely a 
subject worthy of human thought upon which 
he has not given a significant utterance. And 
of all the sources to which he is indebted he 
doubtless owes the most to that unaging Book 
which sprang from the Infinite Spirit of the 
universe. Trace the wide and heaven-high 
flight of his muse on the topics of God, man, 
angels, devils, sin, righteousness, conscience, 
character, hope, despair, life, death, and des- 
tiny. See how often he dips his pen in divine 
fountains. He is ever leaning upward to catch 
the highest voice. This is why it is worth 
while to study Shakespeare and the soul. 

Like the greatest writers, always and every- 
where, Shakespeare thinks and sings about 
God. In Henry the Sixth is the thought of 
the Psalter, "Blessed is that nation whose God 



92 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

is the Lord." Speaking of England's defense, 
Shakespeare says: 

Let us be backed by God and the seas. 
Which he hath given for fense impregnable. 
And with their help defend ourselves; 
In them, and in ourselves, our safety lies. 

His vision stops short of strength who fails 
to see God as the backer of every great and 
good thing. No one who falls short of that 
truth can be supremely sane and strong. To 
see God in his greatest ongoings — that is 
sight supreme. To catch step with God's 
purpose and his plan — that alone is safety and 
salvation for individuals and for nations. All 
sure-sighted souls have seen that truth from 
Shakespeare to Robert Browning. Tennyson 
saw it and sang: 

Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs. 
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the 
suns. 

All great prophets and poets have seen the 
centrality and supremacy of God. Shake- 
speare and all the other prophets have taught 
us that for the soul to break with God is to 
be like a tree that breaks with the soil. 

Shakespeare's message on the meaning of 
man, his potentialities and relationships, his 
place in creation, and his significance is sat- 
urated with the Christian idea, and altogether 



SHAKESPEARE AND THE SOUL 93 

memorable. He wholly sees human nature 
and he sees human nature wholly. His words 
in Hamlet are as meaningful as they are 
memorable: 

What a piece of work is man! 

How noble in reason! 

How infinite in faculties! 

In form, and moving, how express and admirable! 

In action, how like an angel! 

In apprehension, how like a god! 

The beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! 

This high speech is not an unworthy com- 
mentary on the great word in Genesis: "Let 
us make man in our own image." According 
to God and Shakespeare, man is more than 
"a worm of the dust." He is a soul of the 
skies. His faculties are fitted to fit into the 
Infinite. 

In Shakespeare, sin has none of the light 
and sneering touches given by some of the 
superficial writers of to-day. In Shakespeare 
sin is terrible enough to hurl an angel, in 
Milton's phrase, "Sheer over the shining battle- 
ments of heaven." Sin is not an inherited trait 
of human nature. It is not a temperamental 
tendency. Shakespeare sees sin as bad enough 
to wreck the splendid ship of the soul. It is 
bad enough to blot the sun from the sky. 
It is bad enough to break the heart of God. 
In Pericles Prince of Tyre occurs a state- 



94 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

ment which reminds us of a passage from the 
Sermon on the Mount. Compare this from 
Shakespeare, "Few love to hear the sins they 
love to act," with Christ's soul-searching in- 
terrogation, "Why beholdest thou the mote that 
is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not 
the beam that is in thine own eye?" 

Take that passage in Measure for Measure 
and put it alongside of that philippic of Jesus 
on hypocrisy in the seventh chapter of Mat- 
thew. Shakespeare says of hypocrisy: "O, 'tis 
the cunning livery of hell, the damnedest body 
to invest and cover in princely guards." The 
great Galilean said, "Beware of false prophets 
which come to you in sheep's clothing, but 
inwardly they are ravening wolves." 

How sure-footed Shakespeare is as a teacher 
of righteousness! Take this fine phrase from 
the Merchant of Venice: 

How far that little candle throws his beams; 
So shines a good deed in a naughty world. 

Jesus said, "Let your light so shine before 
men that they may see your good works, and 
glorify your Father which is in heaven." 
In comedy and tragedy, in figure and fact, 
Shakespeare is always calling the soul toward 
righteousness. Thus it is that again and again 
this great book of the soul reminds us of 
that other greater Book of the soul. 



SHAKESPEARE AND THE SOUL 95 

And, of course, as all great literary lights 
have done, Shakespeare keeps alight the torch 
of hope. He feels reasons for hope that lie 
far beyond the reach of reason. His love, 
as all great loves have done, outgoes his logic. 
This great dramatist says, in Henry the Sixth, 

In that hope, I throw mine eyes to heaven. 
Scorning whate'er you can afflict me with. 

Paul speaks of hope as "an anchor of the 
soul, both sure and steadfast." Nothing can 
steady the heart like hope. A hopeless man is 
a helpless man. That same stalwart said, 
"We are saved by hope." I have heard that 
Hall Caine, when asked for his philosophy 
of life, said, "We live by hope; no man can 
live by despair." What a pity that such a 
philosopher has not given us in his great 
stories more hope and less despair! 

But with a few master strokes Shakespeare 
has depicted despair. He must have felt its 
deep, dank shadows to have portrayed it so 
perfectly. He seems to have followed the way- 
ward footsteps of the soul into the thick of 
the last, long night. The weird imagery of 
Poe's "Raven," and the frightful figures of 
Byron's "Dream of Darkness," and Tennyson's 
terrible poem on "Despair" might be classed 
with Shakespeare on the same dark subject in 
Richard the Third. These words from Shake- 



96 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

speare might have been written of Judas 
Iscariot: 

I shall despair; there is no creature 

loves me; 
And, if I die, no soul will pity me; 
Nay, wherefore should they? 
Since that I myself 
Find in myself no pity to myself. 

Here it is that the deadly dart of despair 
strikes home to the central self at last. If 
Shakespeare did not know in the deeps of 
personal experience what he here says of 
despair, then he must have had in marvelous 
degree what is known in literature as "the 
experiencing faculty." As a comparative study 
I subjoin a passage from Tennyson's poem 
on "Despair." A man and his wife had given 
up God and hope. Being utterly miserable, 
they decided to end it all by drowning. The 
woman drowned, but the man was rescued by 
a minister of the sect he had abandoned. The 
rescued man in the second paragraph of Tenny- 
son's poem speaks thus: 

What did I feel that night? You are curious. How should I 

tell? 
Does it matter so much what I felt? You rescued me, yet, 

was it well 
That you came unwished for, uncalled, between me and the 

deep and my doom. 
Three days since, three more dark days of the Godless 

gloom 



SHAKESPEARE AND THE SOUL 97 

Of a life without sun, without health, without hope, without 

any delight 
In anything here upon earth? but ah, God, that night, that 

night 
When the rolling eyes of the lighthouse there on the fatal 

neck 
Of land running out into rock — they had saved many hun- 
dreds from wreck — 
Glared on our way toward death, I remember I thought, as 

we passed. 
Does it matter how many they saved? we are all of us 

wrecked at last! 
"Do you fear?"and there came through the roar of the breaker 

a whisper, a breath: 
"Fear? am I not with you? I am frighted at life, not death." 

Shakespeare, again, had great things to say 
about conscience. And it is significant that he 
treats it as a matter of experience, and not of 
explanation. Hear him in Henry the Eighth: 

I feel within me 

A peace above all earthly dignities — 

A still and quiet conscience. 

But in Richard the Third Shakespeare comes 
to a wonderful climax on conscience outraged 
and sinned against. Hear this: 

My conscience hath a thousand several tongues. 
And every tongue brings in a several tale; 
And every tale condemns me for a villain. 

And what a searching saying is that in 
Henry the Sixth! — 

Suspicion haunts the guilty mind; 
The thief doth fear each bush an officer. 



98 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

Even the still and beautiful star-lit sky 
breaks suddenly into a million glaring and 
accusing eyes. Ah, it is so with the sinning 
soul. Yet it must be that conscience is God's 
flashlight to show the wicked wanderer the 
way back through penitence to peace. It 
is conscience that writes Hawthorne's Scarlet 
Letter. That great poem of Lowell "A Legend 
of Brittany" is a master's poetic portrayal of 
remorse. Old huntsmen say that there is odor 
in the deer's heel by which the hound can 
scent him to his death. 

We must not close without a few of Shake- 
speare's great flashlights on life. All of these 
show that his soul was saturated with Scripture. 
In The Merry Wives of Windsor he says, 
"Life is a shuttle." But Job had said centuries 
before, "My days are swifter than a weaver's 
shuttle." In Macbeth Shakespeare says, "Life's 
but a walking shadow." But that old prince 
in the land of Uz had said long before con- 
cerning the brevity of man's life: "He fleeth 
also as a shadow." The great bard said of 
life, "It is a tale." A great Hebrew singer 
had said centuries before, "We spend our 
years as a tale that is told." 

Nor did Shakespeare himself sing more 
surely or sweetly of life than our own great 
and well-beloved Prophet of New England, 



SHAKESPEARE AND THE SOUL 99 

Whittier, in this whispered music from the 
harp of his heart: 

When on my day of life the night is falling. 

And, in the wind from unsunned spaces blown, 
I hear far voices out of darkness calling 

My feet to paths unknown. 
Thou, who hast made my home of life so pleasant. 

Leave not its tenant when its walls decay; 
O Love Divine, O Helper ever present. 

Be thou my strength and stay. 



A STUDY OF SORROW AND THE SOUL 

I can still believe that a day comes for all of us, however 
far ofiF it may be, when we shall understand; when these 
tragedies, that now blacken and darken the very air of 
heaven for us, will sink into their places in a scheme so 
august, so magnificent, so joyful, that we shall laugh for 
wonder and delight. — Arthur Christopher Benson. 

Hope is at the heart of the sorrow that 
sings. Blank despair is mute. Its fingers 
thrum no Hving lyre. No lyrics ripple over 
its palsied lips. The soul has her moods. 
Even Byron, Keats, Shelley had their spasms 
of ecstasy. Self -despair is one thing. Despair 
of God is another. A Hebrew poet said, "My 
heart and my flesh fail, but God is the strength 
of my life." In that is despair of self, but not 
of God. Despair is not indigenous to the 
soul. Hope is the plant that springs natal 
in the heart. Out of the throes of self-despair 
is born the heavenly hope. 

Absolute despair is cold. It kindles no fires 
on life's altars. It strikes off no sparks of 
joy from the flinty steeps of the rugged road. 
Despair sings no songs at sorrow's grave. Its 
music is a moan. Its shout dies in a stifling 
sob. 

Icebergs break. But they do not break 

100 



A STUDY OF SORROW 101 

into flame. The despair poets, while in the 
mood of despair, have produced no living 
poetry. Poetry is soul-fuel fanned into flame 
by heavenly winds. Cold despair may festoon 
your house with icicles, but it plants no flowers 
in your garden. 

Total despair has no capacity. It is a 
broken vase that lies shattered among the 
debris of withered blooms. It is a river 
between whose naked banks break no singing 
waves. And may we not believe that at least 
"a fearful hope" flickers in the spent socket 
of despair.^ God clings long and lovingly to 
the last lingering vestige of life in the soul. 
If he leave, hope dies. 

Emerson's "Threnody" interprets deep sor- 
row. The "aromatic fire" on the mount and in 
the meadow reminds him of the radiant fire- 
spirit of his boy that has vanished, leaving 
only beautiful ashes. As the anguished father 
experiences the soothing power of the south 
wind, the very joy of it makes him sadder as 
its breath of balm recalls the darling boy who 
no longer shares with him the chalice of de- 
light. The very sight of the hills enhances the 
sorrow. Did not the lad he loved once leap 
and laugh among those hills? 

The surpassing value of life was always a 
cherished thought with Mr. Emerson. With 



102 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

him "the darling who shall not return" left no 
equivalent. The soul in its loss is like the 
wounded spot in the garden whence the lovely 
flowers have been torn. Only the replacing of 
the beautiful bloom will heal that wound. The 
lyric laughter of the happy lad no longer ripples 
on the morning air. That silence is sorrow 
distilled. The sudden stillness sickens the 
heart. Ah, the matchless melody of the lad's 
glad laughter! Other music the father's ears 
are yet too dull with grief to hear. Will the 
caroling call of childish glee never ring through 
the hills again? 

There is no loneliness like the loneliness of 
love. It ever wakes to watch and wonder. 
The lullaby of the years will not sing it to 
sleep. The very lapse of time intensifies the 
vividness of memory. The footsteps of the 
years make deep tracks on the soul. 

But no good is permanently lost to the good. 
There is somewhat that never dies. Life and 
love cling forever to the skirts of God, and we 
may always touch his seamless robe. The soul 
is like the tendrils of a vine — they cling closer 
to the trellis as the summer wears away. But 
the pain of parting has never found adequate 
voice. The soul feels what the lips have never 
spoken. Did not hope project itself into 
another home of sweet reunions, the losses of 



A STUDY OF SORROW 103 

this earthly life were enough to sting the soul 
to madness. But the laughing streams of 
solace come leaping from the hills of God into 
all the valleys of human woe. The sob of grief 
will blossom into gladness. 

Tears have been the fertilizers of earth's 
fairest gardens. Grief is the plow that has 
furrowed the fallow soil of the soul and sown 
it rank with golden harvests. The share of sor- 
row's plow has cut the soul's subsoil to the 
world's infinite enrichment. Sorrow mingles 
her potions with bitter-sweet. With steady 
hands she holds the brimming chalice to quiv- 
ering lips because she is the ministrant of love. 
Sorrow has wrung from her wine-press of woe 
the wealth and weal of civilization. Much of 
misery is mercy in disguise. Bloody footprints 
mark the path that leads to crowns. The only 
perfect Man the world has ever seen was per- 
fected in the school of sorrow. 

Moral crises are the testing and the turning- 
points in character. Some crisis must come to 
the soul that makes progress. But peril clings 
to the skirts of strength. Eliminate personality 
and you remove the problem of moral peril. 
Peril hugs the path of personality. Peril hides 
among the hills and crouches in the valleys, 
lying in wait for every unwary traveler. Peril 
prowls in darkness and stalks abroad at noon. 



104 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

Struggle is God's plan for building the soul 
to large proportions. Somewhere along the 
way manhood must meet the angel wrestler. 
"Ease is the way to disease." "Labor is the 
life of life." Struggle wins thrones, and strug- 
gle must hold them. Weary wrestler, the 
King went this way before thee. His sacred 
feet consecrated the rugged road. Only be 
firm on thy way. It will lead thee under 
clear skies some day. The straitened steps will 
yet be light and free. Thy face looks to the 
summits. Thy feet unfettered will yet climb 
thither. 

"Whatever obstacles control. 
Thine hour will come — go on, true soul, 
Thou'lt win the prize, thou'lt reach the goal." 

We shall all meet the angel of Opportunity. 
His feet are swift. His wings are like light. 
His step is as soft as the creep of a shadow. 
Do not fail to snatch an arrow from his quiver. 
It will be needed on life's battlefield. This 
angel's hands hold implements of toil. With 
them till thy fields. Gather thy harvests. 
Garner the ripe grain. Garlands hang thick on 
this angel's temples. Be not eager for these. 
When thy work is done he will let them fall 
upon thy brow. His gifts are like the summer 
gusts from the fields — take them now, or 
never. 



A STUDY OF SORROW 105 

There is the angel of Duty. The place 
where he meets thee may be dark and lonely. 
Some Jabbok of sorrow may roll its turbulent 
tide near by. But on this spot may be thy 
Peniel. Darkness will give place to dawn. 
Gloom will change to splendor. Is the aspect 
of the angel severe.'^ That look is the symbol of 
service. Ah, he will press us sore; he will 
harden the soft palms; he will bruise the 
pilgrim's feet; he will bend the traveler's 
back with many a heavy load; but he will 
plant the sky -ladder at the toiler's feet. Down 
the shining rungs the angels will come. Up 
this ladder of light the toiler may ascend. 

"For be the duty as angel's flight — 
Fulfill it, and a higher will arise. 

Even from out its ashes. Duty is our ladder to the skies. 
And climbing not, we fall." 

Another angel that will meet us is the angel 
of Conscience. His grip is like the grasp of 
God. His is the "still small voice," or it is the 
thunder-speech of the skies. God speaks in the 
calm of the harvest noon. He speaks across 
the hurtling storm. His angel of Conscience 
will meet us on the high hills where the sun 
shines. He will meet us in the vales where the 
thick mists hang. He will meet us in the place 
where birds of joy sing all the day. His voice 
will ring at the sweet noontide. He will call 



106 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

in the midnight's sullen gloom. Ah, this angel 
will have his wrestle with us where the bats 
cling in dismal shades to broken walls. 

Conscience is the touch of God on the soul. 
As to the nature and the functions of con- 
science the philosophers do not agree. Let 
conscience stand for God. Let conscience 
stand for the gleaming eye that looks guilt 
out of countenance. Call it the sky-song that 
steals in to soothe the sobs of penitential 
grief. Name conscience that celestial pull 
that holds men back from sin. Let it be 
the heavenly impulse that moves men on to 
purity and to peace. Let conscience stand for 
God. 

God's forgiveness always goes deeper than 
our own. On this point William Dean Howells 
speaks a deep and weighty word: 

Judge me not as I judge myself, O Lord; 

Show me some mercy, or I may not live; 
Let the good in me go without reward. 

Forgive the evil I must not forgive. 

To stifle conscience is to spoil character and 
kill the soul. In his "A Legend of Brittany" 
Lowell has portrayed the moral tragedy with 
thrilling accuracy. It is the story of Mordred 
and Margaret. They met, and Mordred forgot 
that "he was vowed a monk." "All beauty 
and all life he was to her." This spell of 



A STUDY OF SORROW 107 

youthful love was full of peril. We go at once 
to the heart of the sad story. Love lost itself 
in licentiousness. Mordred, passion-blind, 
feared not the crime, but fronting its dire 
consequences his soul was appalled. He would 
hide crime with crime. He would cover with 
gore the tracks of guilt. That has often been 
crime's dreadful shift. Wretched man. He 
forgot that breaking faith with woman's trust- 
ing love was breaking faith with God. He 
writhes under the scorpion's sting. The swift 
steeds of despair plunge headlong into deeper 
gulfs of guilt and woe. 

All happy sights and sounds now came to him 
Like a reproach: he wandered far and wide. 

Following the lead of his unquiet whim. 
But still there went a something at his side 

That made the cool breeze hot, the sunshine dim; 
It would not flee, it could not be defied. 

He could not see it, but he felt it there. 

By the damp chill that crept among his hair. 

Was it not the touch of God to bring him 
back to goodness? But with sullen tread the 
rebel feet moved on. 

Poor Margaret. Where is she? Lonely and 
sad in the quiet nook where in the days of 
love's sweet dream they had often met. Let 
go the harrowing details. They make the 
heart stagger with deathly sickness. "Enough 
that Margaret by his mad steel fell." Then, 



108 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

in the agony and in the moral wreck and con- 
fusion that always accompany crime, 

. . . beneath the altar there 
In the high church the stiffening corpse he hid. 

And then, to 'scape that suffocating air, 
Like a scared ghoul out of the porch he slid; 

But his strained eyes saw blood-spots everywhere. 
And ghastly faces thrust themselves between 
His soul and hopes of peace with blasting mien. 

His heart went out within him like a spark 
Dropt in the sea; wherever he made bold 

To turn his eyes, he saw, all stiff and stark. 
Pale Margaret lying dead; the lavish gold 

Of her loose hair seemed in the dark 
To spread a glory, and a thousandfold 

More strangely pale and beautiful she grew: 

Her silence stabbed his conscience through and through. 

Ah, how faithful is God! Even from the 
silent lineaments of death he speaks with the 
eloquence of life. One's conscience dies hard 
because one's God never dies. From ghastly 
glooms he still would woo the soul back to 
forfeited goodness. It takes the persistent 
malice of hell to break away from the mercy 
of God. But the determined touch of crime 
may tear away at last the clinging tendrils of 
his love. 

"Knocking, knocking, still He's there. 
Waiting, waiting, wondrous fair; 
But the door is hard to open. 

For the weeds and ivy- vine. 
With their dark and clinging tendrils. 

Ever round the hinges twine." 



A STUDY OF SORROW 109 

The infinite eagerness of God to restore the 
soul is seen in the pain of remorse. It is as if 
God would sting the lost one back to life rather 
than let him die. In the very sense of sin the 
touch of God's love may be traced. The soul 
may go far away, but he will pursue with more 
than a father's pity, with more than a mother's 
compassion. May not remorse be a touch of 
God's remedial hand.^^ He would have me 
taste the bitter fruits of evil-doing that I may 
forsake the way of wickedness. If I betray 
him he will let me feel the sting of betrayal, if, 
perchance, falseness pall upon me, and I per- 
force return to him. Hear Francis Thompson : 

I fled him down the nights, and down the days, 

I fled him down the arches of the years; 
I fled him down the labyrinthine ways 

Of my own mind, and in the mist of tears 
I hid from him, and under running laughter; 
Up vistaed hopes I sped, and shot precipitated 
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears 
From those strong feet that followed. 
That followed after. But with unhurrying chase. 
And unperturbed pace, deliberate speed, majestic instancy. 
They beat, and a voice beat more instant than the feet — 
"All things betray thee who betrayest me." 

The sting of death lurks in the serpent of 
sin. We may not say that God ordains the 
causes of pain, but pain itself must ofttimes be 
the order of his love to bring us back to pain- 
less peace. Must he not suffer when I suffer? 



no OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

Who touches me to anguish touches him to 
pain. I am as "the apple of his eye." In his 
white palms my poor name is graven. Let 
shades of night curtain me in darkness. God's 
hand of love will replenish and light the spent 
candles on life's broken altars. Then let me 
sing with Robert Browning in "The Ring and 
the Book": 

I stood at Naples once, a night so dark 

I could have scarce conjectured there was earth 

Anywhere, sky or sea, or world at all; 

But the night's black was burst through by a blaze — 

Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned and bore. 

Through her whole length of mountain visible: 

There lay the city thick and plain with spires. 

And, like a ghost, disshrouded, white the sea. 

So may the truth be flashed out by one blow. 

And Guido see, one instant, and be saved. 

Long enough to see God is long enough to be 
saved. That truth is at the heart of love's 
message. The feet of mercy seek out every 
pathway that leads to the sufferer's lonely re- 
treat. By every avenue of the soul's experience 
God seeks to effect a permanent rescue. By 
the throes of penitence, by the pain of remorse, 
as well as by the raptures of love he is feeling 
after us. Would that all men everywhere 
might sue for peace, and accept his proffered 
hand. Then would the human struggler be 
valiant and victorious. 



A STUDY OF SORROW 111 

Every highway of human Hfe dips in the 
dale now and then. Every man must go 
through the tunnel of tribulation before 
he can travel on the elevated road of 
triumph. 

The very word "tribulation" is full of in- 
terest. It comes to us from the Latin, tribu- 
lum. That was the name of a harrow, or 
threshing flail. It was used by the Romans 
to separate the wheat from the chaff. ''Tribu- 
latio" was the name that stood for the process. 
It stands for bruises. It speaks of pain. It 
mirrors the flail-marks of the soul. 

As early as the seventeenth century the 
genius of George Wither expanded the mean- 
ing of this word into a quaint but sweet poem. 
Hear him sing: 

Till from the straw the flail the corn doth beat. 
Until the chaff be purged from the wheat. 
Yea, till the mill the grains in pieces tear. 
The richness of the flour will scarce appear. 
So, till men's persons great afflictions touch. 
If worth be found, there worth is not so much. 
Because, like v/heat in straw, they have not yet 
The value which in threshing they may get. 
For till the bruising flails of God's corrections 
Have threshed out of us our vain affections; 
Till those corruptions which do misbecome us 
Are by the sacred Spirit winnowed from us; 
Till all the dusty chaff of empty pleasures. 
Yea, till His flail upon us he doth lay. 
To thresh the husk of this our flesh away. 



112 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

And leave the soul uncovered; nay, yet more. 
Till God shall make our very spirit poor. 
We shall not up to highest wealth aspire— r 
But then we shall; and this is my desire. 

Tribulation is the way of triumph. The 
valley way opens into the highway. Tribula- 
tion's imprint is on all great things. Crowns 
are cast in crucibles. Chains of character that 
wind about the feet of God are forged in earthly 
flames. No man is greatest victor till he has 
trodden the winepress of woe. With seams of 
anguish deep in his brow the "man of sorrows" 
said, "In the world ye shall have tribulation." 
But after this sob comes the psalm of promise, 
"Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." 

The footprints are traceable everywhere. 
Blood marks stain the steps that lead to 
thrones. Scars are the price of scepters. Our 
crowns will be wrested from the giants we 
conquer. Grief has always been the lot of 
greatness. It is an open secret that 

"The mark of rank in nature 
Is capacity for pain; 
And the anguish of the singer 

Makes the sweetest of the strain." 

Struggle is seen in nature. The tiny seed is 
buried in the soil. To come to its place of 
floral ministry it must master something. The 
life-force in its heart must lift itself up against 



A STUDY OF SORROW 113 

the pull of gravitation. It must thrust aside 
the pressing clods and push its head into the 
light. Its triumph is through tribulation. 

No flight were possible to the bird did not 
the air resist the pressure of its pinions. The 
measure of its success is the degree of re- 
sistance overcome. Its flight is free because 
the law of tribulation prevails. 

Even the electric flash across the cloud has 
tribulation. Its line is direct till it reaches a 
condensed stratum of air which forces it aside. 
Thence the subtle force leaps till it reaches 
another such stratum, and on to the end of its 
swift career. The history of the zigzag 
lightning-flash is a history of tribulation. 

The law of tribulation is easily traced in 
mechanical appliances. Consider the secret of 
the balloon's ascension. The confined gas tries 
to escape. The enveloping canvas strives to 
overcome that tendency. Neither force is com- 
plete master, yet the approximate success of 
each lifts the balloon to its dizzy heights. The 
success issues from tribulation. 

Let the wheel testify. What does it witness? 
Its circular success is due to the opposition of 
two forces. The centripetal force would hold 
everything to the center. The centrifugal force 
would hurl everything from the center. The 
resultant is revolution. This is the secret of 



114 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

the wheel. Its revolution is a revelation of 
success through tribulation. 

Trace the law still higher. It runs through 
the history of exploration. Columbus, Living- 
stone, Stanley all triumphed through nameless 
tribulation. The mightiest manhood is born 
amid the throes of struggle. 

Take the inventors. Their way has not been 
flower-strewn — Morse, Fulton, Field, Bell, Edi- 
son, and a thousand others have come out of 
great tribulation to scepter, throne, coronation. 

Tribulation has always marked the trail of 
the true reformer. It is the story of Paul, 
Luther, Savonarola, Knox, Wesley, Wycliff, 
Huss, and all the rest of the mighty army. 
They came through great tribulation to their 
place of power among men. 

The history of literature is a record of sub- 
lime and sorrowful struggle. Every great book 
has been written with the author's blood. We 
may point to these princes of the pen, and say 
truthfully of them, "These are they which 
come out of great tribulation." That state- 
ment applies to every great book, to every 
great man, to every great institution, and to 
every great civilization in the history of man- 
kind. Who was the peerless poet of the Greeks? 
Homer. But that illustrious singer was blind. 
Who wrote the fadeless dream of Pilgrim's 



A STUDY OF SORROW 115 

Progress? A prince in royal purple upon a 
couch of ease? Nay. The trailing splendor of 
that vision gilded the dingy walls of old Bed- 
ford Jail while John Bunyan, a princely pris- 
oner, a glorious genius, made a faithful 
transcript of the scene. His body was im- 
prisoned, but his soul was unfettered. 

Thomas Carlyle said that "ten silent cen- 
turies found a voice in Dante." How? 
Through ease? Through luxury? Never. He 
was lacerated by sharp criticisms. He was 
buffeted and bruised. He was hunted like a 
beast from hillside to hillside. Storms smote 
him. Black nights of sorrow sobbed their 
dirges across his suffering soul. It was then 
that Dante smote his harp. In such a night 
that Italian hero sang for the ages. That is 
the story of genius. That is the heart of 
heroism. 

It is not material achievement, but the soul's 
sublime effort that counts most with God. The 
heroic reach of the honest heart may please 
him more than the actual achievement of the 
hand. 

"Great is the facile conqueror: 
Yet haply he, who, wounded sore. 
Breathless, unhorsed, all covered o'er 

With blood and sweat. 
Sinks foiled, but fighting evermore — 

Is greater yet." 



A LITERARY SEARCHLIGHT OF THE 
SOUL-ROBERT BROWNING 

Browning has a wonderful gift of soul-penetration, of 
looking into and through other persons. He divines what 
they are, how they think, and what they are worth, with 
the swift, sure eye of keenest inspiration. — George Willis 
Cooke. 

The soul is more than anything that any- 
body can say about the soul. The supreme 
speech of the soul is hardly formulable. It is 
not a writing, but a voice. Its essence is not 
expressible in letters or symbols. There is no 
telltale speech that can tell the soul's great 
story. The soul is the one subject that is 
great enough for God to study. Is it any won- 
der that it baffled the searchlight speech of 
Browning? In searching for Robert Browning 
we must always remember that Robert Brown- 
ing is searching for the soul. Browning is in 
earnest even when he is joking. His byplay is 
a wonderful sort of work. There are tears in 
his laughter. And there is always laughter in 
his tears. 

He never leaves us sobbing over incurable 
griefs. Thank God, he has caught the far-off 
clue to the full and final solution of it all. And 
where the pulse of power is too dim to see 

116 



A LITERARY SEARCHLIGHT 117 

still he feels the eternal undertow of truth. He 
may begin his quest in the lowest foothills of 
life, but he is headed for the high Sierras of the 
soul. He goes into the tangled thickets of life, 
but be sure he will find "the clearing." Fear 
not to stand with him in the black night of 
grief, for he will find the daydawn and God. 
Browning has a genius for finding God. He 
finds his footsteps in the sand when seas of 
sorrow have washed them too dim for common 
eyes to see. He turns his searchlight across the 
black of starless skies and they break into 
everlasting bloom. Again, and again, and 
again, that is Robert Browning. He is always 
finding hope and life at the very heart of 
despair and death. That is why so many 
earnest souls dig in his literary loam as miners 
dig for gold. That is why truth-seekers search 
his sayings as astronomers search the night 
skies for stars. 

The realizations of the soul are always more 
than the revelations of the soul. I have beheld 
the sea, but I have seen only a small portion 
of the sea. Still I am certain that all the sea is 
of a kind with that portion I have seen. I have 
not seen the sun. It is too vast for my small 
eyes to see. I have seen only a segment of the 
sun. I have seen only a segment of the sky. 
But am I not saying truth when I say that I 



118 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

have seen the sea, the sun, the sky? Is any 
man at fault, then, if he only partly tells what 
no man can wholly see? My business is to say 
my say in my own best way. That is what 
Browning did. And his way is a great way, as 
in "Instans Tyrannus," "Christmas Eve," 
"Saul," "The Boy and the Angel," "Prospice," 
and many parts of "The Ring and the Book." 
Almost every line of "Pippa Passes" is aglow 
with light and palpitant with power. No man 
can go into the thick of Browning and not feel 
the battle moods of his might and hear his 
clarion call to goodness, and hear the obhligato 
of the soul, and not know the lift of his love-life. 
Few men have told all they have seen. And 
no man has told all that he has felt. There are 
overtones and undertones in life which are un- 
wordable. Did not a great apostle declare that 
he had heard in "the third heavens" things 
which human language could not utter? And 
did not Tennyson feel the transcendency of 
truth when, at the sea's edge, he sang: 

Break, break, break 

On thy cold gray stones, O sea! 
And I would that my tongue could utter 

The thoughts that arise in me. 

Experience is one thing, adequate expression 
is another. Expression always goes limp when 
dealing with the high things of the heart. No 



A LITERARY SEARCHLIGHT 119 

student can tell the whole story of the things 
that he studies. The unwordable always lies 
back of the wisest and weightiest words. Some 
of Browning's sayings seem strange because we 
are unfamiliar with the life-secret he is seeking 
to tell. What botanist has told the whole story 
of the fields and the flowers .^ What astronomer 
has told the whole story of the stars of the 
sky? Listening up the stairways of the soul, 
the greatest auditors have left something un- 
heard, the greatest seers have left something 
unseen, the greatest singers have left some- 
thing unsung. The poet feels more than he 
phrases. It is not easy to write life into lan- 
guage. Who could write all the heart's lyrics 
of laughter? Who shall set all life's sorrows to 
song? It was Wordsworth who spoke of *'The 
still, sad music of humanity." It is not easy 
even for Browning to sing all of the soul into 
song. The Sons of God sang together, but 
even they did not altogether sing it all. The 
greatest Teacher did not say all his say to all 
because his high speech could not be borne by 
the lowly listeners. It is hardly fair to expect 
the greatest human genius to be more than 
human. When the skylark soars out of sight 
we do not blame him for not soaring higher. 
We do not fault the sky because our short 
sight must stop with the sky-line. If we look 



120 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

long enough at a great mountain we shall 
grow somewhat toward its greatness. That is 
a good way to deal with Browning's bigness. 
The mountain winds blow through many 
rough and rugged places, but they are won- 
drous winds when they waft across the weary 
trailsman's brow. The winds that blow from 
the towering peaks of Browning's poesy throb 
with truth and pulse with power. 

If Robert Browning pushed a thousand 
things clear over the edge, it is because he 
pushed far enough to find the edge. A wheel 
may whirl so fast that it seems to stand still. 
But you can tell it is going when you touch it. 
That whirling wheel may make your hand hot, 
or it may take the skin off, or it may break a 
bone, but the wheel is whirling, you are sure of 
that. Then when the flaming chariot of song 
stands still, you stand by the singer's side look- 
ing long and far out into the skies of the soul. 
He will always show you what is worth seeing 
if only you will follow him. Little things will 
look less and large things will look larger after 
you have looked awhile at them with Brown- 
ing's sure-seeing eyes. 

Some people can understand a picture who 
cannot understand a philosophy. Some can 
understand song who do not understand science. 
But such people understand as intelligently as 



A LITERARY SEARCHLIGHT 121 

some other people understand. The scientist 
has no necessary monopoly on the sky simply 
because he is studying the stars. The spirit of 
poesy may catch a finer meaning from the stars 
than the telescope. The spirit of poesy may 
see in "the meanest flower that blows thoughts 
too deep for tears" while the mere analyst sees 
only microbes through the microscope. That 
thought is worth thinking about in these scien- 
tific days. The difficulty of understanding any- 
thing is as often conditioned in the peculiar 
limitations of the person who seeks to under- 
stand as it is in the nature of the thing to be 
understood. A star is not at fault because it 
is too far away for any telescope to reach. The 
song-sparrow must not be scolded because his 
twilight music is not heard by ears that are 
deaf. Let some megaphone help the dull ear. 

It is safe to say that when Browning paints 
a picture it will pay us to look till we see it. 
When he sings it will pay us to listen till we 
hear. Gold mines are worth discovering. New 
worlds are worth finding. Kingdoms are worth 
conquering. If we go afield with Browning, we 
shall find fruits and flowers of bewildering 
lusciousness and beauty. If we go mountain- 
climbing with him, we shall )f eel and hear the 
musical sweep of celestial winds. 

He helps us to see the imusual in common- 



122 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

places. He sings discords into harmony. He 
paints unsightliness into symmetry and beauty. 
He shows us the splendors of life streaming in 
among the sullen shadows of death. He disen- 
tangles for us many a knotted skein of disap- 
pointment and despair. And is not all of this 
ministry wondrously worth while? He is God's 
trailsman among the mountains of life showing 
us the way to the summits. And do not we 
fog-blinded valley folk need that.? 

Browning puts a fresh appraisement on life 
and its divine program. He points out its 
undying sources of everlasting strength and joy. 
I go to him as I go to the sea, not for science or 
technicalities, but for the freshening of faith; 
to get away from my blistering deserts of 
despair. I go to get again his full, far, and 
clear look at life. I go a sea voyaging once 
again with him and God. Listen, for the song 
of this brave and blessed bard is now singing 
in my soul: 

What's life to me? 
"Where'er I look is fire; where'er I listen. 
Music; and where I tend, bliss evermore. 



m 

THE SKYWARD LOOK FROM 
SCRIPTURE 



12S 



Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet. — Poet David. 

The Book enlarges like a heightening sky. — Joseph Parker, 



124 



HIS WORD 

The Word that sounds across the years. 

Speaks of eternal things. 
And hushes all our sobbing fears 

With love's sweet whisperings; 
It is the "Forward, march!" of Him 

Who leads the mighty throngs, 
When all our earthly skies go dim 

With clouds of darkest wrongs. 

His Word that gives the high command 

Sounds through the nations still; 
All good is guided by His hand. 

And girded by His will; 
His voice spoke through the Prophet's word 

To set the ages right, 
And now earth's peoples all are stirred 

By movings of His might. 



125 



THE SCRIPTURE SETTING OF LIFE 

Bound in the bundle of life with the Lord thy God. — 
Prophet Samuel. 

He hath set eternity in their heart. — "Koheleth." 

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul. — Oliver 

Wendell Holmes. 

The lapidary does not give the jewel an 
inferior setting. Its value is great and it must 
have a setting commensurate with its cost. 
Great is the jewel of life, and the great Giver 
of life has given it adequate and significant 
setting. Even in the lower levels of fitness 
that principle of propriety would be expected. 
The costliest stones are not set in brass signet 
rings. The most valuable watch works are 
not set in pewter cases. 

The Scripture setting of life is unmatched by 
measureless distances in any literature — as lit-' 
erature. This Scripture literary handling of life 
is transcendent and unique. It brings us into 
unearthly and eternal significances. There is 
no trifling here. The themes are world- 
themes, prodigious problems, and deathless 
destinies. The literature as literature is his- 
torical, philosophical, dramatic, lyrical, epis- 
tolary, essay, and epic. Here are unequaled 

120 



SCRIPTURE SETTING OF LIFE 127 

stories of love, life, hopes, despairs, joys, sor- 
rows, sin, and salvation. These mighty seas 
of human experience are at high tide with 
tragedies and triumphs. And surging through 
it all, like the underswell of the sea, we feel 
the mighty movements of an all-masterful 
mind. Running through this literary life is a 
redemptive spirit eternally earnest on setting 
right the deep disorders of the world. The 
deepest shadows are in the pictures here, but 
the highest high-lights are also here. This 
whole literature is saturated with a spirit 
which is ceaselessly busy in the recovery of 
infinite values. We feel that the stylus of the 
Infinite Spirit must have written this living 
literature. 

The Scriptures give to life a largeness of 
setting which is not found in other literatures. 
No "narrow neck of land" is here for the 
staging of the soul. "Thou hast set me in a 
large place." The grants of God are not 
cramped corners, but kingdoms. The ranges 
for the soul are wider than sky-wide spaces. 
In this literature the soul's relationships reach 
beyond earthly boundary lines. The soul's 
spheres of relationships and activities are not 
local. Man's responsibilities are cosmopolitan 
because he is a cosmopolite. His sympathies 
must be as wide as the world's suffering. His 



ns OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

service must be as far-reaching as the world's 
need. In all this Scripture setting of a man's 
life we find a largeness of relationship and re- 
sponsibility, of sympathy and service which are 
not found in other literatures. 

As to duration the Scriptures give life an 
eternal setting. The stamp of eternity is on 
my soul and I cannot rub it out. I am going to 
be somewhere and somehow endlessly. That is 
plainly the setting that this literature gives to 
my life. The winds of eternity brush my 
brow. This whole business of life is no tem- 
porary affair. Death is incidental. The thing 
of chief significance is life. Let us keep to the 
main issue. Let us be about our business, the 
big business of living. We need not be side- 
tracked by any of the toys or trinkets of time 
— "Arise, let us be going." 

The Scriptures give life a spiritual setting of 
supreme significance. The thing of outstand- 
ing significance is the ^-egnancy of the spirit. In 
all literature the Bible is the spiritual specialist. 
Spirit supremacy is the keynote of the whole 
Scripture song. "I keep my body under" — 
that is the militant message of Paul. "We 
are clothed upon," but the clothing is not we. 
Flesh is fitting fabric for my spirit here, but 
there is eternal difference between my clothes 
and my spirit. 



SCRIPTURE SETTING OF LIFE 129 

This robe of flesh I'll drop and rise» 
To seize the everlasting prize. 

That is right. This body is my robe, but it is 
not I. I know that I am something infinitely 
other than flesh and blood. The tree's life 
surges up through the roots, but the roots are 
not the tree's life. The life runs through the 
fiber, the leaf, the bloom, but even the life of 
a tree is wholly something other than any of 
these. I have not seen this tree life, but I am 
sure — absolutely sure that it is there, because 
I see its living banners of leaf and blossom 
waving in the wind. I am neither deceived nor 
fooled about this. I know the tree's life is a 
fact. My mind sees that fact as clearly as my 
bodily eyes see the material facts of leaf and 
bark and bloom. On this much ordinary 
sanity must insist. I further know that this 
fact of a tree's life is the most significant fact 
about the tree. I know that the only account- 
ing possible for root and bark and leaf and 
blossom must be based on this fundamental 
fact of the tree's life. 

Flesh is a fact. Flesh is a phenomenon. A 
phenomenon is not primary, but secondary. 
My soul is "prime minister" of the body. It is 
the fundamental fact that accounts for the 
secondary fact of the flesh. I know that I 
know this about my soul. I take my stand 



130 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

here till the heavens roll together as a scroll. 
Why? Because there is no other sure standing 
ground for my soul. 

To man propose this test — 

Thy body at its best. 

How far can that project thy soul on its lone way? 

Spiritual supremacy — that is the Scripture set- 
ting of life. 

After the order of human reckoning life lays 
hold of us from three points — the past, the 
present, and the future. How does the litera- 
ture of Scripture deal with life as related to 
these points.^ Does this literature of life make 
satisfactory disposition of the past? Some- 
times ghostly hands of memory clutch us out 
of the past. There was something even in 
Paul's past that he would gladly forget. Look- 
ing into her past, Lady Macbeth could not 
sweeten the blood smell on her hands by all 
the perfumes of Arabia. Many a ghost has 
walked through the nightmares of the crim- 
inal's dream-times. How to lay these guilty 
ghosts of the past — men would give crowns and 
kingdoms for satisfying answer to that tor- 
turing question. 

On a Western prairie in a little country 
schoolhouse occurred one of those dark county- 
seat tragedies. A man was slain in that 
schoolhouse and a spot on the floor was soaked 



SCRIPTURE SETTING OF LIFE 131 

with his blood. The place was scrubbed, but 
the stain held fast. Little school children took 
fright and fled at sight of that spot. Country 
folk who came to the little schoolhouse on 
Sabbath to worship Him who said, "Thou 
shalt not kill" grew uneasy at sight of that 
deadly stain on the floor. Then some kind 
man tried to cut that stain out with a keen- 
bladed knife, but the knife scars were con- 
stant reminders of the bloody deed which had 
been committed there. Then the schoolhouse 
was abandoned and a new one was erected in 
another place where little children could study 
or play in peace, and where men and women 
could worship God without being haunted with 
the awful sense of murder. But are there not 
bloodstains in memory that will not out? Are 
there not stains in our past that no knife of 
resolution or regret can cut away? 

Sad memory weaves 
No veil to hide the past. 

No happiness is possible without some pla- 
cating provision for that past. This Scrip- 
ture literature points out such provision. It 
teaches divine forgiveness for our guilty past. 
A Voice of infinite fatherliness and motherli- 
ness speaks through these pages, saying, "I 
will remember them no more." There is no 
other way but that to give peace to the tor- 



132 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

tured memory of man concerning his guilty 
past. On these pages Some One has been 
writing in crimson headlines the unforgetable 
words, "I will blot out thy transgressions." 
What else could be done with them that would 
take the infinite sting from the sinner's soul? 

Not all the blood of beasts. 

On Jewish altars slain. 
Could give the guilty conscience peace. 

Or wash away the stain. 

This is too great to explain, but, seeing that 
it is God's plan, it is too good not to he true. 
The closer we keep to the simplest and sweetest 
things in the truest and best human hearts 
the nearer we shall grasp this wonder of love. 
Would not the human father, if he could, blot 
out his prodigal son's past? Would not the 
real mother blot out the poor prodigal daughter's 
past? The infinite Father's heart is the foun- 
tain whence all human loves have come. It is 
his lips of love that drink away the dead seas 
of our dark despairs. 

Mother love made the wonder plain to the 
little lad waiting at her knee. His childish 
heart had been staggered by the celestial 
rhetoric of the promise, *T will blot out thy 
transgressions." "What does it mean, mother?" 
he ventured. She bade him bring his slate, 
telling him to make all sorts of crooked and 



SCRIPTURE SETTING OF LIFE 133 

unsightly lines over it. He obeyed. Then she 
passed a clean moist sponge over the slate and 
all the ugly marks that he had made were gone. 
"My precious boy," said the wise mother, "that 
is what God does with our transgressions when 
he hlots them out'' No book of theology or 
science or philosophy or psychology could have 
made it half so plain. Through that mother's 
heart of love her little lad saw the truth of 
Eternal Love. Alas! great philosophers have 
lived and died without seeing that. 

This Scripture setting with reference to life's 
past is unique in literature. It is the only one 
that sweetens bitter memories, the only one 
that retrieves past losses, and the only one 
that redresses past wrongs. Life would be 
forever out of plumb without this Scripture 
scheme to swing it into balance. The man 
who catches this perspective of life's past — no 
matter how the ghosts of memory may stoop 
among the shadows — may still meet the present 
and the future with a calm and courageous heart. 

What is the Scripture setting of life's throb- 
bing 'present? It is plainly Janus-faced and 
looks both ways. The present must look both 
ways to see the truth about life. The present 
is the chink between the two logs of the past 
and the future in this house of life. The 
present life of every man is a point at which 



134 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

past influences which have not been shaken off 
come to culmination. Every man's present 
must be defined partially at least in terms of 
the past. You cannot understand any man's 
present without reckoning with a thousand 
conditions and influences in his past. If we 
are to understand any man's to-days, we must 
reckon with the teachers of his yesterdays. 
The childhood conditions of every man's past 
lay their fashioning hands on the adult con- 
ditions of his present. Not in any fatalistic 
way is this to be taken. It is simply a rational 
recognition of the familiar law of sequence. 
The Scripture statement of this law is old and 
familiar — "Whatsoever a man soweth, that 
shall he also reap." Yesterday's sowings are 
to-day's reapings. To-morrow's reapings will 
be from the sowings of to-day. So far as char- 
acter and destiny are concerned this is the 
Scripture setting of life's whole story. Be- 
cause this law is as true with good as it is with 
evil it rallies our hearts to high heroisms. Evil 
can be overcome with good. This sends us 
singing into the tasks of to-day and up the 
hill slopes of to-morrow. 

"Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute; 
What you can do, or dream you can, begin it! 
Boldness has genius, power, magic in it! 
Only engage, and then the mind grows heated; 
Begin it, and the work will be completed." 



SCRIPTURE SETTING OF LIFE 135 

How does this Scripture setting of life deal 
with the future? Does it differ from other 
literary records about life? To look at the 
other literary records is to answer that ques- 
tion. Csesar held that "death ends all." The 
elder Pliny praised suicide. Lucretius called 
immortality a silly delusion. The future of 
Buddhistic literature is a Nirvana of nothing- 
ness. In short, all literatures unlighted by the 
Scripture spirit are overdomed by starless and 
sunless skies, so far as futurity is concerned. 
The Scriptures touch the future with the finger 
of unfaltering certainty. Feel the thrill of these 
Scripture touches: *T shall be satisfied when I 
awake." The epic poet of the Hebrews said, *T 
shall see God." And he made this declaration 
with reference to postmortem experience. 

The gospel literature, which is the out- 
flowering of the spirit of Christ in the writer, 
advances toward the future with still surer 
step. Hear these trumpet tones: "Though a 
man were dead, yet if he believe in me he 
shall live again." "He that belie veth in me 
shall never die." The Patmos prophet saw 
into a future world and shouted across the 
centuries, "There shall be no night there," 
as if he would say: "I am the Columbus of 
spiritual realms, and I have found a new 
world. This new world which I have dis- 



136 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

covered is sinless, nightless, painless, tearless." 
Well, that will certainly be a new set of con- 
ditions. We have never seen any country like 
that here. We have never been out of the 
sound of crying and we have always been in 
sight of tears. This message of the Patmos 
prophet is surely something new for this old 
world. Running through this Scripture litera- 
ture — and this is the point that I am making — 
there is a light that was never struck from 
earthly sources. It is a light peculiar to this 
literature. It is not characteristic of other 
literatures unfed of these far-away fountains. 
Other literatures fumble awkwardly at the 
gates of the future. They are un-at-home with 
this whole subject, and, like some lost child, 
they cry aloud toward the pitiless dark of un- 
answering skies. Such a cry is constantly 
breaking from the poetic pages of the "Rubai- 
yat" of Omar Khayyam. It is the piteous cry 
of a soul that has lost its way. It is the fear- 
some cry of a child that is lost in the dark. 
And I give these lines here as fairly representa- 
tive of all literatures on this subject when 
unlighted by the Scriptures. Here is Omar's 
cry in the dark: 

Ah, my Beloved, fill the cup that clears 
To-Day of past regrets and future fears; 

To-morrow! — Why, To-morrow I may be 
Myself with Yesterday's Seven thousand Years. 



SCRIPTURE SETTING OF LIFE 137 

For some we loved, the loveliest and the best 
That from his Vintage rolling Time hath prest. 

Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before. 
And one by one crept silently to rest. 

And we, that now make merry in the Room 
They left, and Summer dresses in new bloom. 

Ourselves must we beneath the Couch of Earth 
Descend — ourselves to make a Couch — for whom? 

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend. 
Before we too into the Dust descend; 

Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie. 
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and — sans End! 

Alike for those who for To-Dat prepare. 
And those that after some To- Morrow stare, 

A Muezzin from the Tower of Darkness cries, 
"Fools! your Reward is neither Here nor There." 

"Why, all the Saints and Sages who discussed 
Of the Two Worlds so wisely — they are thrust 

Like foolish Prophets forth; their Words to Scorn 
Are scattered, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust. 

There is no shy in this kind of literature. 
Why should it have been so in vogue in cer- 
tain quarters for these many years? The 
skies of the soul are the only skies that hold 
fadeless stars. My destiny is not in the dust. 
I am a quenchless spirit. That is the truth 
that needs to take hold of the restless heart of 
this age. My spirit must draw life — eternally 
enduring life — ^from the currents which flow 
from the Infinite Spirit. I shall spring out of 
the dust and walk among the stars. I refuse 
to be a grub and make my bed in the mud. I 



138 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

will work my wings. The lift has not gone out 
of them yet — ^nor will it ever go. My soul will 
have a shy and it shall blossom with eternal 
stars. That is the Scripture setting of life. 

Only yesterday we lost from our New Eng- 
land folk a beautiful spirit of poesy. He had 
hardly gone far enough into life to brush the 
dews from the grass. But he had caught the 
supernal vision. He heard rolling from the 
eternal hills the high slogan of the soul. He 
walked amid the music of the mountain winds 
and struck the harp of his heart to deathless 
song. I set the triumphant notes of "The 
Tenant" of Frederic Lawrence Knowles sing- 
ing here to offset Omar's sobbing in the dark: 

This body is my house — it is not I; 

Herein I sojourn till, in some far sky, 

I lease a fairer dwelling, built to last 

Till all the carpentry of time is past. 

When from my high place viewing this lone star. 

What shall I care where these poor timbers are? 

What though the crumbling walls turn dust and loam — 

I shall have left them for a larger home. 

"What though the rafters break, the stanchions rot. 

When earth has dwindled to a glimmering spot! 

When thou, clay cottage, fallest, I'll immerse 

My long-cramp' d spirit in the universe. 

Through uncomputed silences of space 

I shall yearn upward to the leaning face. 

The ancient heavens will roll aside for me. 

As Moses monarched the dividing sea. 

This body is my house — it is not I. 

Triumphant in this faith I live, and die. 



DREAMERS 

Behold, this dreamer cometh. — Gen. 37. 19. 
There is nothing so striking as a dreamer in action. — 
Victor Hugo, 

The best dreamers are the widest awake. 
The soul has eyes that see without the optic 
nerve. The spirit may be sleepless while the 
body slumbers. A boy who became prime min- 
ister of Egypt had a dream. That dream of the 
harvest scene was no idle fancy. It was no 
delusion. The dream of that boy was the 
vision of a seer. It was the grip of power on 
his soul. That psychic look was no wild-eyed 
stare into vacuity. God's apocalypse had 
swept the dreamer's soul. 

That truth threads the centuries. Saint 
Peter's towered first in some great builder's 
dreaming soul. Columbus had a vision of the 
New World before his feet pressed the ma- 
terial continent. A thousand wonders have 
trooped by in panoramic procession in that 
wizard laboratory of Thomas Edison. The 
oratorio of Elijah first rolled its thunder-music 
across the dream-rapt soul of the great com- 
poser. To the inner vision of the artist, Beauty 
walked in queenly robes upon the naked 
canvas. 

139 



140 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

"Visions come and go. 

Shapes of resplendent beauty round me throng. 
From angel lips I seem to hear the flow 
Of soft and holy song." 

Thanks to the dreamers for waking a sleep- 
ing world. Westminster Abbey of England, 
the Castles of Holyrood and Stirling in Scot- 
land, the Tuileries and Louvre of France, 
Russia's Kremlin, Spain's Alhambra; and in 
Venice the Palace of the Doges; the Blue Tower 
of Copenhagen; and Constantinople's Saint 
Sophia — these are all the products of mighty 
dreamers. 

Charlemagne dreamed, and the Roman em- 
pire throbbed into life. Peter dreamed, and 
Russia woke. Sweden is the dream of Adolphus. 
In psychic vision William the Silent saw the 
Holland that was to be. Victor Emmanuel 
saw the coming Italy. Bismarck realized his 
dream in uniting the scattered states of Ger- 
many. Abraham Lincoln saw in vision a fet- 
terless nation. He saw in fact the shackles 
fall. 

Astronomy is the realized dream of Kepler, 
Copernicus, Brahe, Galileo. The soul sees 
stars that swim beyond the reach of telescopes. 

Electricity, in its present relations to science 
and commerce, is but the fulfillment of the pro- 
phetic dreams of scientific seers. Let history 



DREAMERS 141 

call the roll. A few names will do to conjure 
with. There are Stephen, and Franklin, and 
Gray, and Galvani; Faraday, Wheatstone, 
Morse, Edison, Reis, Bell, Roentgen — wide- 
awake dreamers. 

The dreamers have struck the loftiest music 
from the harp of the soul. They must be cred- 
ited with having produced the wealth of the 
world's literature. 

Stand with uncovered head in the presence of 
the dreaming seer while he hurls this question 
into the face of the future: "Who is this that 
Cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from 
Bozra, this that is glorious in his apparel, travel- 
ing in the greatness of his strength .f*" Then 
hear the heroic reply as it comes singing from 
the guileless lips of the Son of man: *T that 
speak in righteousness, mighty to save." Ah, 
the dreamers have ever been the wide-awake 
watchers on the towers of truth. They catch 
the first note of the future's victory-psalm. 
They scent the fragrance of the bloom that is 
to be. The future is the footfall of God com- 
ing to meet the forward step of man. 

"Every hope which rises and grows broad 
In the world's heart, by ordered impulse streams 
From the great heart of God." 

More than once the face of God has looked out 
from the crises of historv. That face has flashed 



142 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

a searchlight on the nations. That is the only 
light that can solve the problems of the race. 

In times when men have been dumb with 
dread the Sky-Voice has spoken. But, as of 
old, men only said, "It thundered." They have 
been blind to the "heavenly vision." They 
have been deaf to God's great voice. But that 
voice still sounds across the years. He that 
hath ears to hear, let him hear. In these six 
lines from Aldrich there is a message: 

In youth, beside the lonely sea. 
Voices and visions came to me. 

In every wind I felt the stir 
Of some celestial messenger. 

Full dark shall be the days in store. 
When voice and vision come no more. 



HOLDEN EYES 

But their eyes were holden. — Luke 2^, 16, 

What shall I see, if ever I go 

Over the mountains high? ' 

Now I can see but their peaks of snow. 
Crowning the cliffs, where the pine trees grow; 
Waiting and watching to rise. 
Nearer and nearer the skies. — Bjbrnaon. 

Alas for him who never sees 

The stars shine through his cypress trees. 

— Whittier. 

Wrong perspective is the malady of man- 
kind. We are nearsighted, farsighted, cross- 
eyed, color-blind, or stone blind. Our eyes are 
holden. We lack vision. That is the trouble 
with us all. 

The truest seeing is not with the eyesight. 
Vision is of the soul. The heart-pure are 
blessed, for they see — they see God. All the 
world is dark when the heart is blind. The 
spendthrift-splendor of the midday sun shines 
in vain. 

Some eyes are holden by the hand of sensual 
pleasure. Some are holden by the hand of 
prejudice. Some are held by the grip of greed. 
Many are blinded by the gods of the world. 

Vital forces elude the sight of the bodily 
eyes. The optic nerve sees things in the gross. 

143 



144 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

The soul sees essences. Life looks out upon us 
from every turn in the road. But she often 
hides under many a sweet disguise. She is real, 
even when she is unrealized. The sensitive heart 
can feel the measured throb of her holy hand. 
Credibility does not depend upon tangibility. 
The touch of hearts is as real as the touch of 
hands. 

Going to Emmaus the hearts of the disciples 
burned by the way as they held high converse 
about the wondrous Stranger. He had re- 
cently vanished from their delighted view. 
Whither had he gone.? The query was pointed 
with pain. His warm breath breathed on them 
then, though they knew it not. The Teacher 
was on that lonely road, but the puzzled pil- 
grims, not aware of his presence, wrestled with 
their problems. Ample help was at hand, but 
they availed not themselves of the mighty 
ministry. The Comforter bore them company, 
but these sad men with holden eyes had no 
surcease of sorrow. The Rest-Giver was in 
reach, but on they trudged aweary still. The 
hand of healing was close enough to touch, 
but sorrow's wounds were yet agape. 

"The healing of His seamless dress 
Is by our beds of pain; 
We touch Him in life's throng and press. 
And we are whole again." 



HOLDEN EYES 145 

The real does not always appear. What ap- 
pears is not always real. There are optical 
illusions. Things are not always what they 
seem. But there is always something better 
for us than the things we see. Insight is better 
than eyesight. It was Jesus and the great Jew 
of Tarsus who taught us to look behind veils. 
It is safer to trust soul-sight than it is to trust 
eyesight. The soul is the real seer. If men 
will earnestly look for God, he will appear 
somehow, somewhere. He does not always ap- 
pear where we most expect him. Sometimes 
he appears most where we least expect him. 
To see God anywhere is a sight worth the see- 
ing. Alas that some should never look to see 
him anywhere! No man will ever see as he 
ought till he sees him. But there are souls 
that are \dsional. They are not the visionary 
idlers of the world's playground. Their ken 
uncovers the unseen verities. 

"There are who, like the seer of old. 
Can see the helpers God has sent. 
And how life's rugged mountainside 
Is white with many an angel tent." 

The vision of the invisible waits for the 
wide-awake soul. The poet sees a thousand 
things which do not appear to unobserving 
eyes. What we touch with our hands is not 
always closest to our hearts. It is, after all, 



146 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

the intangible that moves us most. The 
sights that the soul sees are those that stir us 
to high endeavor. It was the vision of the 
invisible that nerved Moses to masterful 
endurance. 

To the soul that has vision this is never the 
only world. John Keats, the poet, wrote to a 
brother in America, "I feel more every day, 
as my imagination strengthens, that I do not 
live in this world alone, but in a thousand 
worlds." 

Sometimes the valley-ways of earth are 
shadow-filled. Sometimes the swirling storms 
of dust hide every star. The winds moan. 
Darkness swathes the world. The spirit of 
man staggers amid the gloom. Still the soul 
may see. The God of these shadows is the 
God of the soul. In the night he giveth songs. 
Listen : 

"Though time may dig the grave of creeds, 
And dogmas wither in the sod. 
My soul will keep the thought it needs — 
Its swerveless faith in God. 

**No matter how the world began. 

Nor where the march of science goes. 
My trust in something more than man 
Shall help me bear life's woes." 

But seeing is not always believing. One may 
see and not believe. One may believe and not 
see. Mary saw Jesus at the sepulcher. She 



HOLDEN EYES 147 

did not believe it was he. Thomas saw Jesus, 
but he wanted further evidence before he 
would believe. 

Believing is often the condition of seeing. 
We believe the truth-teller. Then we believe 
the truth. We believe the guide. Then we 
see the path. The vision of faith does not 
depend upon what the eyes see, but what the 
soul sees. 

Some kind of belief is necessary to sanity. 
Total unbelief would be total insanity. Be- 
lieving on sufficient ground is a rational proc- 
ess. It is not less rational because it is 
psychic. 

Sheer belief as an act of intelligence is as 
necessary to the progress of science as it is to 
the progress of Christianity. "Blessed are they 
that have not seen, and yet have believed" is a 
statement of wide application. It will be seen 
some day that Jesus always had the keenest 
scientific insight. His sight always went 
straight to the soul of things. 

Historic knowledge roots itself in the belief 
of recorded facts. The student of history must 
base the most of his knowledge on the testi- 
mony of others. Intellect cannot escape from 
that. 

The scientist sees certain phenomena. On 
this vision of the visible is conditioned his 



148 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

belief in the existence of the invisible. The 
astronomer must trust his telescope. The bi- 
ologist must believe his microscope. The 
chemist must give credence to the tales that 
are told in acids and crucibles. The geometri- 
cian must believe Euclid. The Christian must 
believe Christ. 

If we always doubt, we must always be in 
the dark. Doubt is despair. Doubt is death. 
The soul can believe against odds if it will. 
Difficulties and hard problems are a part of 
our earthly heritage. They will not all leave 
while we stay here. That is the sound postu- 
late of reason and of the soul. The difficulties 
of unbelief are far greater than those of belief. 
The man who looks into the face of the sun 
and doubts it is no more a fool than the man 
who looks into the face of the soul and doubts 
that. To insist that the sun shall hang forever 
in midsky is to play the role of a madman. To 
wait till the dawn of all earth's morrows is to 
be an idler all the day. The light of to-day will 
be enough for the labor of to-day. Up, then, 
my soul, and at thy task! The work of life is 
eternally cumulative. 

"I have a life in Christ to live; 
I have a death in Christ to die; 
And must I wait till science give 
All doubts a full reply? 



HOLDEN EYES 149 

Nay; rather, while the sea of doubt 

Is raging wildly round about. 

Questioning of life and death and sin. 

Let me but creep within 

Thy fold, O Christ, and at thy feet 

Take but the lowest seat. 

And hear thine awful voice repeat. 

In gentle accents heavenly sweet, 

*Come unto me and rest; 

Believe me and be blest.' " 



THE MINISTRY OF MERCY 

New every morning. — Prophet Jeremiah. 

Blessed are the merciful. — Jesus of Galilee. 

I will have mercy, and not sacrifice. — Jehovah. 

It distilleth as the gentle dew. — William Shakespeare. 

If one is good there is no end to good things. 
There is an infinite series of goodness. God 
has not made anything common or unclean. 
The least things always seem better to the 
best man than the greatest things do to the 
worst man. The Midas touch gets into human 
experience. The soul whose touch turns things 
to gold will always be rich. His sustenance will 
not fail. His meat is to do the will of Him that 
sent him. 

What my life gives off will come back to it 
some time with interest. The tide will come 
in with larger volume than it went out. The 
fountain flings its spray skyward. But the 
silver showers fall back again on the fountain. 
The boomerang flies back to the hand that 
flung it. The vulture returns to the carrion. 
The bee goes back to the honey. 

We are in the midst of a universal ministry. 
That is one of the secrets disclosed by the 
great Jew of Tarsus. He said, "All things 

150 



THE MINISTRY OF MERCY 151 

work,'' See that circle grow. "All things 
work together.'' In the "all things" is uni- 
versality. In the "together" is method. But 
still the circle widens. "All things work to- 
gether for good," In that is purpose. And 
purpose discloses personality. Yet another 
horizon is seen by the outward sweep of the 
circle. "All things work together for good to 
them that love God." In the last five words is 
the law of conditionality. There is the God- 
ward side of man's work and the manward 
side of God's work. The man may acquiesce 
or he may rebel. There was no discord in the 
world's music till the hand of sin smote the 
harp-strings of the soul. No noxious weeds 
grew in God's garden till the adversary sowed 
the tares. The fountains of love were as sweet 
as the dew till an enemy embittered the waters. 
Man has marred the masterpieces of his Mas- 
ter. Strange and sad as it is, man can undo 
what it takes God to do. 

There is a presiding Personality over men 
and things. The bard of Avon spoke truth 
when he said, 

There is a divinity that shapes our ends. 
Rough-hew them how we will. 

The forces that play upon us are from 
everything we touch. God calls everything to 
serve him and man. Things do not work at 



152 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

random. There is divine harmony everywhere, 
could we but catch the music. Nothing hap- 
pens in the spheres of the divine activity. 
Purpose may be traced in every corner of 
creation. 

Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose 

runs. 
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the 

suns. 

To be able to trace that purpose is to untangle 
many a puzzle of Providence. 

A thousand things can be accomplished by 
genius which ordinary mortals can never hope 
to achieve. The ministries of genius are mixed 
with mysteries which the rank and file can 
never comprehend. But the purpose of the 
genius is easily traced when the effect of his 
work is seen. Despite the fact that we are 
familiar with the general appearance of the 
phonograph, mystery is at its heart. But 
when we hear the voice of an old friend repro- 
duced in speech or song we discern in that the 
purpose of the inventor. From the verge of 
ordinary limitations that talking machine is not 
only incomprehensible, but impossible. Yet to 
the genius in whose prolific brain it was born 
it is simple and easy of construction. His 
genius awes us. Our stupidity amazes him. 

Let that illustration suggest the hiatus be- 



THE MINISTRY OF MERCY 153 

tween the intelligence and power of God and 
the ignorance and weakness of man. It is only 
a pot of paint that the pupil sees at the side 
of Raphael's easel. But in that same unsightly 
mass the great artist sees the sweet Madonna. 
We see the under side of the cloud. We say 
the world is dark. We hold that it is sundown 
everywhere. But on the upper side of the 
same cloud the suns and stars of a thousand 
centuries are shimmering. We interpret life 
and its experiences from the under side. That 
side is always in the shadow. God interprets 
life from the upper side. That side is always 
crystal clear. We see the tangled threads. 
He sees the warp and woof woven into beauty. 
A poet sings the music of the mystery: 

"My life is but a weaving 

Between my God and me; 
I may not choose the colors — 

He worketh steadily. 
Full oft he weaveth sorrow. 

And I, in foolish pride. 
Forget he sees the upper, 

And I the under side. 

"I choose the strands all golden. 

And watch for woven stars; 
I murmur when the pattern 

Is set in blurs and mars. 
I cannot yet remember 

Whose hands the shuttles guide; 
And that my stars are shining 

Upon the upper side. 



154 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

"My life is but a weaving 

Between my God and me; 
I see the seams, the tangles — 

The fair design sees he. 
Then let me wait with patience. 

And blindness, satisfied 
To make the pattern lovely 

Upon the upper side." 

The manifestations of love are not always 
mild. Not realizing this, I think we often 
misread the message of mercy. "Whom the 
Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every 
son whom he receiveth." The most of our 
puzzles grow out of the fact that we do not 
comprehend the chastenings of compassion. 
Idle indulgence is not mercy. It appears rude 
and ruthless to me when I see the florist tear- 
ing the shrubs and flowers from their loam- 
love in the garden. But when I see them by 
and by in the greenhouse blooming in their 
beauty, and sheltered from frost and storm, I 
know that the uprooting process of the florist 
was the process of love. I saw the act, but 
I did not see the purpose of the actor. But in 
the after-light of truth I discovered the secret 
of sympathy. 

A lad with a breaking heart is standing out- 
side the operating room. A kindly surgeon in 
that room is amputating the right arm of the 
child's father. To the immature mind of the 



THE MINISTRY OF MERCY 155 

boy the deed is ghastly and cruel. Nothing 
could be farther removed from love. So the 
perplexed little sufferer thought. But in the 
after-light of experience, he saw even in that 
the secret of love. His childish ignorance had 
misread the record of mercy. Ofttimes it must 
be so that our Divine Surgeon sits beside our 
beds of pain and whispers in words of love, 
"What I do thou knowest not now." 



POINTS ON POWER 

I am full of power by the Spirit of the Lord. — Prophei 
Mieah, 3. 8. 

A man's power is his idea, multiplied by and projected 
through his personality. — Phillips Brooks. 

The central source of all power is God. He 
is the fountain head whence spring all the 
rivers of might. 

No man has created an ounce of power. A 
man may use it. He may abuse it. No man 
can make power. In any degree it is a great 
gift. With power a man may climb to heaven 
or crawl to hell. Paul had power. When he 
turned it against God it struck him down, 
swooning and blind. When he used it for God 
it made him a master among men. The Son 
of the morning had power. He perverted it. 
Perverted power made him the Prince of dark- 
ness. The might that would make a man may 
mar an angel. 

Nothing is sought so much as power. Men 
ally themselves to various forms of energy for 
material gain. They have discovered that the 
power of God in the wind may be used to 
profit. Thus they set sail to ships. They 
build a wheel and hang it aloft that the winds 
of God may pump water for their cattle. The 

156 



POINTS ON POWER 157 

power of water whirls the wheels of commerce. 
Hydraulic pressure is God's pressure. Every 
photograph is proof that somebody has utilized 
God's power in the sunlight to print a pic- 
ture. Every man must accept God's power 
in some form or do without its help in any 
form. 

Dominion is the destiny to which all men 
are called by the use of God's power. The 
shining skirts of the Almighty brush the finger- 
tips of every toiler. Currents of divine energy 
roll in swift tides across the world. The earth 
is everywhere atremble with the footsteps of 
Deity. Men may walk with him to weal or 
they may walk from him to woe. In electric 
currents his power runs under the seas and 
over the hills. Men harness these steeds of 
his strength and ride to success. 

The highest material success depends upon a 
right attitude toward the power of God in 
material forms. God allies himself with every- 
thing we touch in order that he may touch us. 
He is never far away. Listening, we may hear 
him. Looking, we may see him. Feeling after 
him, we may find him. All creation is athrob 
with the pulsations of his life and love. His 
messages come from meadow and mountain, 
from fen and field and forest. Human nature's 
soul communes with nature's Over-Soul. 



158 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

Hear this song by Richard Realf : 

O Earth, thou hast not any wind which blows 
That is not music. Every weed of thine 
Pressed rightly, flows in aromatic wine; 

And every humble hedgerow flower that grows. 

And every little brown bird that doth sing. 
Hath something greater than itself, and bears 

A loving word to every living thing — 
Albeit it holds the message unawares. 

All shapes and sounds have something which is not 
Of them. A Spirit broods amid the grass; 

Vague outlines of the everlasting thought 

Live in the melting shadows as they pass; 
The touch of an Eternal Presence thrills 
The breezes of the sunset and the hills. 
Sometimes — we know not how, nor why, nor whence — 
The twitter of the swallows 'neath the eaves. 
The shimmer of the light amid the leaves. 
Will strike up through the thick roof of our sense. 
And show us things which seers and sages saw. 
In the gray earth's green dawn something doth stir. 
Like organ hymns within us, and doth awe. 

Jesus taught clearly that every man is re- 
sponsible for the use he makes of power. The 
responsibility of power is the theme of the 
parable of the talents. The man of power can 
never gloat over it. He cannot sit at ease and 
felicitate himself over the possession of power. 
He cannot retain it unless he bestow it. Power 
brings deepest joy to its possessor when it 
gleans in the harvest fields. It is most ecstatic 
when, with knotted thews, it throws itself 
under the burden of an overloaded brother. 



POINTS ON POWER 159 

Men forget that they are stewards. Every 
gift is a loan. Every talent is a trust. Talents 
must transmit themselves in the ministries of 
toil. In that is their life. The hoarded talent 
is like the hoarded manna — it will spoil. The 
non-use of talent is the abuse of talent. The 
telegraph operator counts for naught if he 
does not transmit the message. Truth is 
given to be given away. There is no other 
way to keep it. Seeds do not grow till they 
are planted. Money does not increase till it 
is invested. Talent must work or wither. 
Invest or divest — that is the alternative that 
fronts the face of power. Who sows most 
reaps most. Who gives most has most. The 
way to grow puissant is to serve. 

"O, whatso'er may spoil or speed. 
Help me to need no aid from men. 
That I may help such men as need." 

But a man may make a burying ground of 
his business. He may cover up conscience and 
character with capital. He may bury his gifts 
in the rubbish of commerce. His talent may 
be trampled in the earth by the hoofs and 
wheels of traflSc. He may sink it in a shaft. 
He may hide it in a mine. He may bury it in 
his farm. He may let it lie in the rain of 
pleasure and in the storms of passion till it 
rusts and rots away. 



160 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

It will be worth a lifetime of toil to hear at 
the last the "Well done" of the great Overseer. 
He knows. It is never ill when he says "Well 
done." Even the disciples said that the nard 
was wasted, but Jesus said of her whose lavish 
love had poured it out, "She hath wrought a 
good work." 

The worst of men never appreciate the best 
of service. Men killed Paul, but God crowned 
him. Men crucified Peter head down, but he 
walked erect into heaven. The world ap- 
plauded Herod, but it was a ghastly jest. 
Jests do not eject sin from the soul. The 
world called Alexander great. But above his 
sleeping dust history writes his epitaph as 
"The youth who all things but himself sub- 
dued." Nothing that mars manhood can have 
Christ's "Well done." Whatever is done for 
God is well. 



GIANTS AND GRASSHOPPERS 

And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which 
come of the giants; and we were in our own sight as grass- 
hoppers, and so we were in their sight. — Num. 13. 33. 

Be strong! 
It matters not how deep intrenched the wrong. 
How hard the battle goes, the day, how long; 
Faint not, fight on! To-morrow comes the song. 

— Maltbie D. Babcoch. 

Giants may be grasshoppers and grasshop- 
pers may be giants. 

A hornet can sting an elephant to frenzy. 
It was a stone from the sHng of a shepherd 
boy that felled the giant of Gath. A single 
moth can mar the royal wardrobe of an em- 
pire. It was a little mother-bird fluttering over 
her nest that turned an army from its course. 

Size is not strength. Mind is mightier than 
matter. It is spirit that sways the scepter of 
empire. 

Pessimism will make any people puny. Fear is 
at the heart of it. And fear is always enfeebling. 

Pessimism blinds the heart to the highest 
possibilities. It unsteadies the hand of en- 
deavor. As with a vulture's beak it plucks 
peace from the heart. 

Pessimists are always grumblers. And grum- 
blers are always pessimists. No real poet was 

161 



162 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

ever a pessimist. No real reformer was ever a 
pessimist. No great leader was ever a pes- 
simist. And a pessimistic Christian is as im- 
possible as a sunless summer. 

The high heart of hope always sings with 
Anna Shipton: 

He was better to me than all my hopes. 

He was better than all my fears; 
He made a bridge of my broken works 

And a rainbow of my tears; 
The billows that guarded my sea-girt path. 

Carried my Lord on their crest; 
When I dwell on the days of my wilderness march, 

I can lean on his love for the rest. 

Our feet will never fare toward Canaan 
while we face toward Egypt. That is a truth 
of the widest practical application. No man 
ever gets the best things by going backward. 
We leave no heavens behind us. They are all 
before us. The Delectable Mountains rise not 
from the dewy plains of youth-time. They 
loom aloft in the love-ripe days of a holy old 
age. The breath of eternal spring breathes 
balm over the spirits of hoary saints. 

The lap of the future will empty rich har- 
vests into the arms of God's reapers who 
steadily go forward. Let us have Canaan now 
and in the future. Let us leave Egypt, with 
her flesh pots and golden calves, her pessimism 
and her paganism, forever behind. 



THE PERSISTENCE OF PERSONALITY 

No man liveth to himself, and none of us dieth to himself. 
— Apostle Paul. 

A man need not concern himself to inquire whether he has 
an influence. All he has to do is to live, and the influence of 
his life will follow him as surely as his shadow. — Francis 
Greenwood Peabody. 

No personal life is isolable. Personality is 
connectional. It cannot avoid relationships. 
Morality is impossible to impersonality. But 
personality is responsible. 

Every life is a magnet. It attracts. It 
holds. It may be with the clutch of death. 
It may be with the grasp of life. Soul-grip 
must be reckoned with. Lines of influence 
run out from personality like rays from the 
sun. They may despoil the beauty on which 
they fall. These lines of power may slay the 
soul they touch. They may bring life to the 
pallid cheeks of death. Individuality cannot be 
and not be influential. 

Personality propagates power. The points of 
power everywhere are the places where per- 
sonality touches. The place of personality is 
internal. The persistence of personality is 
eternal. Life is a deep sea, and the undula- 
tions move onward forever. 

163 



164 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

The character of my associate creeps into 
mine at every crevice. Personality will im- 
press itself. And it is impressionable. Every 
soul is a sensitized plate that receives impres- 
sions. Time develops the plate. Time prints 
the picture. Memory is the after-image that 
hangs in the soul forever. 

No man can ever say all that he is. He is 
always more for good or bad than he can tell. 
Character is all that counts. Everything the 
life writes is dipped deep in the inkwells of 
character. One's influence will be like one's 
character. Deeds are characteristic of the 
doer. The lark will have its musical whistle. 
The crow will have his "caw." The mourning 
dove will have her funeral note. The asp will 
keep its venom. The adder will keep his sting. 
No flower will give off fragrance that it does 
not have. No personality will impart a spirit 
it does not possess. The odor will get its 
quality from the flower. The fruit will get its 
flavor from the tree. Influence will get its 
quality from the character. 

The soil of the soul is fertile. It will not be 
unproductive. Something will spring out of 
the living loam. It will be brambles or roses. 
It will be cockel or wheat. A plant may be 
puny in the soil of one soul, and flourish when 
transplanted to another. A trait of character 



PERSISTENCE OF PERSONALITY 165 

that has feeble growth in the sire may come 
to full flower in the son. Goodness grows. In 
that is the hope of humanity. The trend of all 
that is true in men is ever Godward. Some 
day others 

"To the disappointed earth shall give 
The lives we meant to live. 

Beautiful, free, and strong; 
The light we almost had 
Shall make them glad; 

The words we waited long 

Shall run in music from their voice and song." 

We may not reach the goal ourselves, but we 
can contribute something to the influence that 
will bring others there by and by. Christen- 
dom still feels the mighty pull of Luther's 
personality. The most powerful personalities 
that have lived are factors yet in the world's 
civilization. Examples are thick on the pages 
of history. 

The persistence of personality is proof of 
immortality. Personal power does not cease 
when the familiar forms of its manifestations 
have disappeared. It is a serious thought that 
personality persists. The current may dip 
under the sands of the river-bed, but the 
subterranean waters will break out again some- 
where in plunging cataracts. The good that 
men thought was dead will flow in swollen 
streams of blessing. Also the evil that has 



166 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

long lurked amid the sleeping shadows of life's 
deep sea may come again into sight like the 
water snake emerging from the waves. At 
first sight it may be small. But the propor- 
tions will grow huge in truth's perspective. A 
tiny insect may ruin the reeds of the largest 
organ. No cause can be small whose effect is 
great. The beginnings of evil are like the 

"... little rift within the lute. 
That by and by will make the music mute. 
And ever widening slowly silence all." 

The psychic power of manhood is the might- 
iest force in the world. No seismograph can 
measure the strength of its upheaval. The 
potentiality of manhood outranks in strength 
the tide-swing of the sea. 

The power of personality is best seen in the 
highest type of manhood. Look at the Man 
of Galilee. He said, "If I be lifted up, I will 
draw all men unto me." Jesus is the master 
personality. Somehow, even the men who hated 
him w^ere drawn to him. He was sought by 
the self-important Sadducee and Pharisee. The 
halt, the maimed, the blind were in eager quest 
for him. All conditions of human sorrow flowed 
to him as rivers to the sea. He was a man of 
sorrows because the sorrows of all men were 
his. His grief was a soundless sea into which 
flowed all the rivers of human woe. He is the 



PERSISTENCE OF PERSONALITY 167 

great loadstone of love. No other life can 
draw like his. 

The greatest statesmen are drawn to him. 
Lincoln chose a sentence from the speech of 
Jesus as the keynote of his own statecraft. 
Gladstone was a loving disciple of his great 
Master. 

He attracts the scientists. The world has 
never had a teacher so thoroughly scientific. 
He often answered the greatest question by 
asking another. Along the path of the known 
he led men to the knowledge of what had 
hitherto been the unknown. He taught the 
mysterious movements of the Spirit by the 
mysterious movements of the winds. He al- 
ways set the feet of Truth squarely on the 
facts. No wonder that, with few exceptions, 
the leading scientists of the world have loved 
him. 

The greatest musicians have been drawn to 
him as bees to flowers for nectar. The sub- 
lime music that has broken from his lips has 
filled the world. The truth he taught is set to 
heaven's high rhythm. 

In the lineaments of his face the artist finds 
the subtle beauty he delights to paint. The 
world never tires looking at the masters' pic- 
tures of the Master. 

For the finest strokes of literary genius his 



168 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

thoughts have supplied the material. He has 
ever been the soul of the poet's sweetest song. 
His own literary touch is always stamped with 
a divine beauty. He weaves love's colored 
dream with all the sweetest hues of earth and 
heaven. 

It is fitting that Hooykaas should break 
forth with this encomium: 

"Thy name shall be borne on the breath of 
the winds through all the world; and with that 
name no thought except of goodness, noble- 
ness, and love shall link itself in the bosoms 
of thy brothers, who have learned to know 
thee, and who thou art. Thy name shall be 
the symbol of salvation to the weak and wan- 
dering, of restoration to the fallen and the 
guilty, of hope to all who sink in comfortless 
despair. Thy name shall be the mighty cry in 
progress, in freedom, in truth, in purity — ^the 
living symbol of the dignity of man, the epi- 
tome of all that is noble, lofty, and holy upon 
earth. To thy name shall be inseparably joined 
that ideal which thou didst bring into the 
world, and which can never be rejected from it 
more. Thy life was short, yet in it thou didst 
more than any one of all thy brethren to uplift 
the souls and lives of men." 



THE PREROGATIVE OF FAITH 

Shout; for the Lord hath given you the city. — Captain 
Joshua. 

Faith is the supreme courage. It is an easy and a cowardly 
thing to deny; it needs a supreme courage to believe. — W. J. 
Dawson. 

It is always the prerogative of faith to claim 
success before it is seen. 

Faith itself is an evidence of unseen things. 
We talk wisely about the "philosophy of faith." 
We speak of it as a "doctrine" or a "system." 
I am not sure that we think about faith as the 
very essence of the soul's most satisfactory 
evidence. E Mere, That old Latin term 
means "by which" or "with which to see." 
Now, faith is not eyesight, but it is soul sight. 
Doubt hoodwinks the heart, but faith is the 
soul's clear vision of truth. The faithless heart 
is always dissatisfied. Doubt is simply the 
heart's rejection of evidence. Doubt can never 
bring repose any more than darkness can 
produce light or death can regenerate life. 
The heart must have evidence. And faith is 
the forecast of ultimate certainty. It is the 
soul's foresight of what is yet invisible to the 

169 



170 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

bodily eyes. The sight of the invisible was the 
secret of Moses's endurance. It is the secret 
of all strong souls. 

He was no fanatic who said to the people, 
"Shout, for the Lord hath given you the city." 
The bestowment of a gift must always precede 
its actual possession. 

Some day science itself will see that faith is a 
scientific principle. It will be discerned that it 
is not the theory of a theologian. It will be 
discovered that faith is the only satisfactory 
working hypothesis for intellectual as well as 
spiritual progress. When science plants both 
feet on this great truth, her light will shine 
full circle. 

Faith is a soul-fact as really as a flower is a 
soil-fact. Faith is as necessary to the success 
of the soul as rivers and railroads are to com- 
merce. Faith is ever the force that fells the 
Jerichos of life. 

A faithless man is a feeble man. All great 
leaders have been men of great faith — ^not so 
much faith in the mere verbal setting of a 
creed, but faith in principles, faith in Provi- 
dence. They have seen in history the goings of 
God among the nations. 

We all have our Jerichos to-day, no less than 
did the Hebrews of old. The mechanic and the 
miner, the carpenter and the farmer, the parent 



THE PREROGATIVE OF FAITH 171 

and the teacher, the scientist and the states- 
man — Jericho walls of diflSculty front us each 
and all. But if we follow God's directions, and 
move on faithfully in his service, all of these 
walls will "fall down flat." 



THE KING AND THE BEGGARS 

He is Lord of lords, and King of kings. — John» Prophet of 
Patmos Isle. 

There was a certain rich man. — Luke 16. 19. 

There was a certain beggar. — Luke 16. 20. 

The bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax 
shall he not quench. — Prophet Isaiah. 

The King of love my Shepherd is. 
Whose goodness faileth never; 

I nothing lack if I am his. 

And he is mine forever. — Henry W. Baker. 

Soul-poverty ^ is pauperism. Many a hut 
holds a prince. Many a palace houses a 
pauper. A certain rich man was gorgeously 
arrayed, but his soul was nude, himself was 
unclothed. Only stuff woven of spiritual fiber 
can clothe spirits. The grave will consume the 
purple and fine linen. Royalty of soul passes 
through the fires of death unscathed. The 
robe of flesh will supply the charnal banquet 
of worms. 

The hand of doom struck the knell of Dives. 
The fellowships of earth were snapped asunder 
like river-reeds. The joys of sense vanished. 
The ponderous mists of eternity rolled in upon 
him. Hope is dead. He stumbles over her 
tomb into abysmal deeps of woe. The worm 

172 



THE KING AND THE BEGGARS 173 

that dies not feeds on the fiber of his soul. 
The scorpion stings again, and yet again. He 
is alone, save that vultures of despair attend 
him. Alone. That word is brimming with 
anguish. Hot grief is at its heart. How 
lonely is death! 

All that poets sing, and grief hath known. 

Of hopes laid waste, knells in that word. Alone. 

Dives died thus, not because he was rich, 
but because he was wrong. He sowed to the 
wind. Now he must reap the whirlwind. 

**The tissues of the life to be. 

We weave with colors all our own; 
And in the field of destiny 
We reap as we have sown." 

But behold that royal-souled beggar that lay 
at the rich man's gate. From poverty to para- 
dise — that is his biography. Dogs licked his 
sores. But his soul was good enough for angels 
to kiss. The proud world wagged its head at 
the sufferer, and passed him by. That is the 
oft-repeated story, ancient and sad. Kings and 
queens would fain stand now with uncovered 
head at Homer's grave. But the world let 
that princely singer beg. The world let Luther 
go hungry, but his gifts to Christendom have 
made men rich. John Howard Payne, whose 
lyric of love still sings at ten thousand fire- 
sides, was left by the thankless world to die a 



174 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

homeless wanderer. And there was Thomas 
Chatterton. The guilty world must answer for 
his fate. He was a miracle of genius. But 
before his rare gifts came to full flower the 
cruel world left him half starved in his London 
attic. The sacred lips of manhood's dawn had 
scarcely touched his brow. But his spirit, 
fresh-winged, was strong enough to sweep the 
empyrean. His palms were full of jewels. His 
heart was as full of song as is the lark's on 
Mayday morn. He gave us "Goodwin," "The 
Mynstrel's Songe," "The Resignation," and 
other rare notes that enriched the melody of 
English verse. The world preferred his sob to 
his song, and now she hears neither, and sighs. 
Chatterton, bright bird of the dawn, has flown. 
In other days Another came. He was worthy 
to be cradled in the skies. His garments were 
made of the morning light. Will not the earth 
receive him with eager joy.^^ Nay. The world 
shut the door in his face. There was no room 
for him. He slept in the ox's manger. But if 
he had left us then, the world had never found 
the long way back to God. The world had 
room for fame, the world had room for power, 
the world had room for wealth, the world had 
room for pleasure — it had no room for him. 
True, for all worlds could not contain a life so 
vast as his. The falling of his feet was music 



THE KING AND THE BEGGARS 175 

fit for angels. But he could not be housed in an 
earthly inn. Kings had welcome, but not the 
King of kings. An artist would be accorded 
the best place in the palace, but he who threw 
upon the canvas of his snow-white life the 
sublimest picture of love and mercy was 
spurned from the doorsteps of earthly homes. 
Well does he know the pain of being rejected. 
Even his own did not receive him. He knows 
the anguish of homelessness. No downy pil- 
low soothed his aching temples. Will not such 
as he speak love's softest word to sorrow? 
Such is his record engraven on the centuries. 
To lives that have been plundered of moral 
health and purity he will extend the hand of 
healing and of help. To every sufferer he will 
be high-souled Brother. 

Study this King's bearing toward his beggar- 
brothers. The vast emprise of redemption en- 
gaged his high thought. Into that lofty medi- 
tation the angels themselves desired to look. 

Yon beggar by the wayside attracts his 
notice. Were that lonely figure there some 
shining angel, the King might pass him by. 
But this great and good Galilean halts at the 
sufferer's side to engage in humble ministry. 
The throngs were hurrying to the festival. 
Nothing so common as a blind beggar could 
delay them. But this King, because he is 



l76 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

kingly, tarries with the beggar. Love delights 
to linger in sweet service in the haunts of sor- 
row. This King were not the Son of man did 
he pass by the suffering sons of men. He 
waits to heal. He always had too much to do 
to hurry. Infinitely keener is his eye for soul- 
values than is the eagle's for the sky. He 
knows that traces of celestial royalty linger 
yet in many a buffeted and broken life that the 
world has long ago forgotten. He is the great 
psychic explorer. The least fragment of worth 
lost amid the soul's royal ruins cannot escape 
him. His deft fingers will touch life's lost 
chords to melody again. He will heal the 
bruised reed. His breath of love will fan the 
smoking flax to flame. 

Poor beggar, thou art calling him. He stands 
still. He waits thy coming. Never did this 
Healer go away from the approaching feet of 
misery. The folds of his royal mantle will fall 
over the shame of thy nakedness. Cheer thee, 
sufferer. Thy welcome will be sure. He sees 
thy sorrow. That is thy plea. Hear his sweet 
word: "Him that cometh unto me I will in no 
wise cast out." That is his guarantee. It is 
irrefragible. In thy self-despair have hope in 
him. The healing current of his life he will 
turn upon thy soul. Thou shalt follow him 
in the way, seeing and living. 



THE KING AND THE BEGGARS 177 

But one is slow to give up the last vestige of 
one's possessions. The cloak still clung to the 
beggar's shoulders. That much the law al- 
lowed even a beggar. It was his nightly shelter. 
It meant much to gaunt want. It was precious 
to poverty. But wise Bartimseus relinquished 
all lesser values in order to win the supreme 
prize. His sight would be worth more than his 
cloak. Inward peace would be worth more than 
outward possessions. 

Friend, it is thus with thee. It is the inner 
wealth that satisfies. The soul cannot feed on 
gold. No house-roof can shelter the storm- 
tossed sinner's soul. Dismantle thee of all thy 
wretched cloaks. Prodigal, return to thy 
Father. He will put the best robe upon thee. 

See those leprous beggars. The King is pass- 
ing. The wretches call t him. Suffering is 
always alert for sympathy. Sorrow sharpens 
the soul's sensibilities. Is there not a kind of 
wireless, spiritual telegraphy .^^ The soul can see 
without the retina. The soul can hear without 
the auditory nerve. It is God's way of mercy. 
He will not isolate himself from human pain. 
He listens more for sobs than for songs. He 
would heal all men's woes. 

"There is no place where earthly sorrows 
Are more felt than up in heaven; 
There is no place where earthly failings 
Have such kindly judgment given." 



178 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

But suffering is ofttimes the surgical opera- 
tion that saves the sufferer. It was his sore 
need that drove the leper to the source of 
supply. He knew his case was helpless and 
hopeless. But at sight of the King hope rallies 
even in rags and wretchedness. To be healed 
had only been the troubled dream of the leper's 
despair. But this kindly King speaks. A 
feeble response comes from the leper's soul. 
Hope stands once more at the door. Despair 
departs. The sweet voice of God steals in 
among the royal ruins. Celestial radiance robs 
sorrow's night of its gloom. The leper is 
healed. All things are possible to him that 
believeth. Nothing is too hard for the Lord. 
That he should take such pains with material 
so hopeless and revolting is enough to bring 
the laughter of hope to the lips of death. And 
it does, for he mastereth death. The King 
thinks more of us than we do of ourselves. 

"How thou canst think so much of me. 
Being the God thou art. 
Is darkness to my intellect. 
And sunshine to my heart." 



SHELTER 

For thou hast been a shelter for me. — Poet David. 

Many voices have offered me a home for my quiet hours; 
Thou alone hast promised me a covert in my storm. — George 
Matheson. 

God provides adequate shelter in this world 
of storms. He does not leave the soul nude 
and unsheltered. "The Lord is our refuge and 
strength, a very present help in trouble." 
Defeat is never disastrous till the soul breaks 
down. No poisoned shaft can pierce the 
"breastplate of righteousness." No dart of 
death can break through the "shield of faith." 
Purity is impervious. God is the only shield. 
And without him the soul is forever unsheltered. 

"Mighty rock, whose towering form 
Looks above the frowning storm. 
Rock by countless millions tried. 
In Thy shadow let me hide." 

God shelters us in storms of sorrow. He 
makes all things work together for good to 
them that love him. That knowledge to him 
that has it is sure shelter. There are many 
sources of sorrow, but to know that God's 
goodness will turn every current of grief into 
a river of mercy — that is infinite solace. And 

179 



180 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

of that fact the soul may be sure. It will 
always be true that the heart can know what 
the tongue cannot tell. Untellable truth may 
still be knowable. Speech has never uttered 
the profoundest secrets of soul-peace. The 
soul may know God as a shelter when storms 
of sorrow fall. God shelters us from storms of 
sin. None other can. 

Plenteous grace with thee is found, 
Grace to cover all my sin. 

What else can hide from his pure eyes, whose 
look sees smut upon the stars. The "filthy 
rags" of self -righteousness are too short to 
cover the soul. 

It was only the innocent man who found a 
place in the "cities of refuge." The guilty man 
could not be shielded there. Righteousness has 
always been rewarded, though the coronation 
has often been delayed. Righteousness is the 
only enduring renown. Human hands have 
never woven a fadeless crown. Men may crown 
the king. But only God can crown the char- 
acter. He lays the laurel of life on the lily 
brow of faithful love. Crowns of goodness will 
last with living luster when the sheen of earthly 
gold shall tarnish and grow dim with death. 

These "cities of refuge" were for the shield- 
ing of innocence and not guilt. Thus God 
would erect safeguards against guilt. But "in 



SHELTER 181 

the fullness of time" Christ came, not to call 
the righteous, but sinners to repentance. His 
age-long purpose of redemption finds its fullest 
sweep amid the havoc of the heart that sin has 
made. Where sin abounded grace did much 
more abound. 



A SOUL AMONG SWINE 

And he began to be in want. — Luke 15. llf. 

The torn manuscripts of the human soul. — Rushin. 

The soul was made for hyperian altitudes. 
It is natal to the skies. This bird of paradise 
can never feel at home with vultures. A nest 
of biting serpents and stinging adders is no 
place for an angel. 

Narcissus walked among the rude swains of 
Attica, thinking himself but one of them. He 
saw in the water one day a beautiful face. It 
was fairer than Apollo's or Aphrodite's. He 
was amazed to find that the face was his own. 
In that he saw that he was akin to the gods. 
Knowing this, he was henceforth another man. 
With lofty mien he trod the fields as if he were 
a god. He scorned everything unseemly. Thus 
glassed in God's truth the soul may see her 
kinship to the King. 

Sin is the one despoiler of the soul. Its 
genesis is in the soul. Were there no souls, 
there were no sin. The problem of sin in all its 
bearings is past any man's solution. But sin 
is here. Sin began in the universe when the 
first personal choice walked with rebel feet 
across the will of God. The first rebel was the 
first free will that made that choice. The re- 

182 



A SOUL AMONG SWINE 183 

sponsibility for sin inheres in him who com- 
mits it. The "original sin" was committed by 
the original sinner. I am not responsible for 
that, nor for him. 

Sin is lawlessness. Sin is not natural. Na- 
ture is law-abiding. God is the author of 
nature, but he is never the author of lawless- 
ness. Nature runs along the track of his will. 
Sin is always a contravention of his will. Law 
is obedient to the Lawmaker. But sin smites 
the Lawmaker in ruinous rebellion. Essential 
nature and essential sin are as far apart as 
God and Satan. God is the author of the one. 
Satan is the author of the other. 

Some good people talk of "inbred sin." 
There is no other kind; in fact, there are no 
kinds of sin. The kind is one. If sin breed at 
all, it must be in the soul. Sin breeds in the 
sinner, not elsewhere. Sin is not an entity 
separate and apart from personality. Sin does 
not lie dormant in the soul like a sleeping tiger. 
It is not a creature, but the act of a creature. 
The sinner must be some one in order to sin. 
He must do something to be a sinner. The 
deed may be physical. It may be mental. It 
may be spiritual. It may be all three at once. 
Sin is not a seed springing forth against nature, 
it is a soul springing forth against God. 

The sorrow of sin is deep and dreadful. 



184 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

Anguish is always at its core. Night comes 
when the sun sets. When life leaves, death en- 
ters the crumbling temple. Sorrow and sin are 
inseparable companions. Death cannot part 
them. The final touch of his chill hand forever 
binds together these grewsome partners of woe. 

Sin brings the sorrow of torturing memory. 
The dark record is indelible. "The flood of 
years" flowing over it forever cannot wash it 
away. It is ineffaceable. Even salvation does 
not take away the memory of sin. "The re- 
membrance of them is grievous unto us.'* 

Sin cuts off the sources of happiness. It 
breaks faith with God. It destroys com- 
munion with him. Apart from him there are 
no rapturous delights. The inflow of God to 
the soul and the outflow of the soul to God — 
that makes the trade winds of bliss. 

Sin brings sorrow by breaking the soul's 
dynamic connection with the source of all 
power. When the trolley-arm slips the live 
wire the result to the car is inertia. All prog- 
ress is paralyzed. So with the soul when its 
hold on God is broken. 

There is a deep sob in this song of Lowell: 

Men think it is an awful sight 

To see a soul just set adrift 
On that dread voyage from whose night 

The ominous shadows never lift; 



A SOUL AMONG SWINE 185 

But 'tis more awful to behold 

A helpless infant newly born. 
Whose little hands unconscious hold 

The keys of darkness and of morn. 

Mine held them once; I flung away 

Those keys that might have open set 
The golden sluices of the day. 

But clutch the keys of darkness yet; 
I hear the reapers singing go 

Into God's harvest; I, that might 
With them have chosen, here below 

Grope shuddering at the gates of night. 

The sorrows of sin are shown in the ex- 
periences of the prodigal son. It is a long 
way from the Father's house to the swine-lots 
of sin. The time it takes to traverse the dis- 
tance may be brief. The dark tragedy of sin 
hastens to its fatal close — nay, it has no end, 
save in God's forgiving mercy. The yawning 
chasms of sin are far below the sunny heights 
of holy manhood. One mad plunge of passion 
may seal one's doom. The spaces are vast 
between virtue and vice. Falling is an effort- 
less process. But to regain the summit — ah, 
that means blistered feet, blood-marks, clenched 
teeth, knitted thews, resolution, courage, man- 
hood, God. Miles do not count for much with 
God, but men do. God measures distances by 
character. 

In the prodigal's experience there was the 
sorrow arising from an overwhelming sense of 



186 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

waste. His riotous living turned out to be 
nothing but dying. He had squandered soul- 
substance. No angel has computed that value. 
The shining threads of that fabric were spun 
from the fiber of heaven. The angel of life 
wove them in the looms of God. 

Poor prodigal, wallowing with swine, when 
God meant thee to walk with angels. Stay 
thy hand, thou self -destroyer; above thy ruin 
stands thy Saviour. Hear this word, sweet be- 
yond the naming: "Though your sins be as 
scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though 
they be red like crimson, they shall be as 
wool." 

In the prodigal there was also the gnawing 
sorrow of want. Sin promises robes at first, but 
gives rags at last. Sin offers a gilded palace, but 
drags the sinner at last into a yawning sepul- 
cher. Sin proffers bread, but it is the poison 
of asps. The fruit sin gives is the apples of 
Sodom. The fountains of sin sparkle, but 
they are charged with venom. Sin has gardens, 
but they grow rank with the nightshade. The 
music of sin is the sough of deadly winds. 
The only shelter sin affords is the charnel house. 
Sin promises repose on beds as soft as eider- 
down, but on these beds men sleep the sleep 
of death. No cup is too sweet for sin to em- 
bitter. No chalice is too pure for sin to befoul. 



A SOUL AMONG SWINE 187 

No blooms are too fair for sin to blight. Sin 
would smite the thorn-crown hard down on 
the brow of Love. Sin would stab the very 
heart of God with stillettos of hellish hate. 

Wretched wanderer, soul-spent with sinning, 
thou hast been deceived. How vast must be 
thy want! Thou hast been cheated of peace. 
As the bee rifles the flower of honey, thy soul 
has been raided and rifled of purity. Thy 
proud power has departed. Prone thou liest, 
trodden under the torturing heel of fear. 
Thine eye, once like the eagle's, is now luster- 
less. The pinions of thy soul have lost their 
majestic poise. They droop now bedrabbled at 
thy side with the poison damps of death. 

Poor pauper! Thy want has widened to a 
yawning gulf of despair. The wide spheres of 
thy love are emptied of God. Alas, for thee! 

But cheer thee, cheer thee. Some pilgrim 
hastens hither upon the highway. Thy Father 
hies him over the hills to meet thee. His love 
will kiss thee back to pardon and to peace. 
On thy bony finger he will place the ring of 
honor. Whose honor.^ My soul, whose honor.'^ 
The honor of his compassion. He will cover 
thy rags and shame with the robe of his own 
royalty. Not thy footsteps, but thy soul-steps 
brought thee to him. Hear the angels sing — 
that music is thy welcome home. 



GOD'S SIFTINGS 

Like the chafif which the wind driveth away. — Poet David. 

Will gather the wheat into his garner. — Luke 6. 17. 

Till from the straw the flail the corn doth beat, 
Until the chaff be purged from the wheat. 
Yea, till the mill the grains in pieces tear. 
The richness of the flour will scarce appear. 

— George Wither. 

The strength of God's army is not in quan- 
tity, but in quality. Might is not in the mul- 
titude, but in the man. Principle, and not 
powder, is the power in God's armies. One 
heroic, God-filled heart is mightier than a god- 
less host. The secret of mastery is not in the 
mass, but in the man. 

Quality always counts more than quantity. 
Sheet lightning is harmless, though it flashes 
over wide spaces. The concentrated electric 
current in a little unscreened wire touches the 
workman's hand and he dies. The winds that 
waft their wings over the wide prairies mean 
death and destruction when their energies 
crowd into the cyclone's fatal funnel. 

Thirty-two thousand people were too many. 
Ten thousand was better. But that was still 
too many. Given God and Gideon and the 
three hundred swerveless soldiers, then the 
Midianites were mastered. 

188 



GOD'S SIFTINGS 189 

The winnowing winds of God are ever sift- 
ing out the chaff and saving the wheat. No 
golden grain has ever slipped through the 
meshes of God's providential screen. The best 
is always in God's keeping. The worst is sure 
to waste away. It is not in God's plan to 
preserve it. 

No lasting harm can come to him who 
follows the good. He cannot die who lives 
for the deathless right. No wind of the world 
can blow away the worthy wheat. It is only 
the chaff that the wind drives away. Every- 
thing good comes back to God. Only debris 
will drift away. 



THE PRINCE 

The Prince of Peace. — Prophet Isaiah. 

Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace! 
Hail the Sun of righteousness! 
Light and life to all he brings. 
Risen with healing in his wings. 

— Charles Wesley. 

Who is he? The world has had many 
princes. The name is not new. But the 
Prince of whom I speak is peerless. The wide 
world is too little to domicile him. His feet 
are ashimmer with fire. At his tread thrones 
tremble. Nations nestle in his palms. The 
ages hang their laurels on his brow. 

Who is he? The answer is too big for verbal 
reply. The treasuries and greatest gifts of 
civilization must make response. The world's 
dictionaries cannot define him. The creeds of 
Christendom will not contain him. He is no 
dogmatist. He is no sectarian. He is no un- 
reasoning partisan. No bigoted priest is he. 
He is a Friend, Brother, Father. His compas- 
sion compasses the world's distress. 

See him as a man, he looked like a man, he 
talked like a man, he felt like a man, he wept 
like a man. He was a Man of sorrows. His 
heart was the sacred receptacle of all men's 

190 



THE PRINCE 191 

anguish. It is no wonder that Napoleon stam- 
mered the hesitant words, "If it be lawful to call 
him a man." Of only one in all history it is said, 
"He did no sin," and this Prince is that Man. 

See him as a Friend. He never posed. He 
struck no attitudes. Under secret pressure he 
never failed. He stood closest when the heart's 
stress was greatest. His ear was attuned to the 
cry of sorrow. He gave most where promise 
was least for remuneration. He was a friend 
of the rich and the poor. He did not class men 
thus. He recognized men as right or wrong. 
With him the moral standard was supreme. 

Angels might call him to solace and slumber, 
but the sorrowing heart was the magnet that 
drew him. The sadder the cry the gladder 
was his response. There is a wretched woman. 
Her heart is bleeding at every pore. Guilty 
inquisitors have condemned her. In pro- 
nouncing her sentence of death they announce 
their own death penalty. Hear this sweet 
word from the Prince's lips: "Neither do I 
condemn thee; go and sin no more." Thus it 
was that he bore himself toward the sinner 
that washed his sacred feet with her tears. 

" To the hall of the feast came the sinful and fair; 
She heard in the city that Jesus was there; 
Unheeding the splendor that blazed on the board. 
She silently knelt at the feet of the Lord. 



192 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

"The frown and the murmur went round through them all, 
That one so unhallowed should tread in that hall; 
And some said the poor would be objects more meet 
As the wealth of her perfume she showered on his feet. 

"She heard but the Saviour, she spoke but with sighs; 
She dare not look up to the heaven of his eyes; 
And the hot tears gushed forth at each heave of her breast 
As her lips to his sandals were throbbingly pressed. 

"In the sky, after tempest, as shineth the bow. 
In the glance of the sunbeam, as melteth the snow. 
He looked on that lost one — her sins were forgiven. 
And the sinner went forth in the beauty of heaven." 

Consider this Prince as a teacher. "No man 
ever spake Hke this man." He threw new Hght 
on the old truths. He condemned no truth 
that he found in the philosophy of the day. 
But he brought it into clearer perspective. 
It had never had the setting which he gave 
it. He set truth in the concrete, like the 
diamond in a ring, till it gleamed with new 
luster. 

The common people heard him gladly. That 
was a great achievement in the progress of 
truth. He taught the teachers of the day what 
they never before had known. He never taught 
a truth that was not central and essential to 
some great system. To his clear eye the ma- 
terial mirrored the invisible and spiritual. He 
chose the symbols of flowers and birds and 
grass for the showing of great lessons. He let 



THE PRINCE 193 

fly his swift arrows to the very centers of 
character. Nor did he once miss the mark. 

Love was at the heart of all that Jesus 
taught. Supremacy is love's prerogative. Love 
is at ease when it dominates all else. We re- 
pudiate "the divine right of kings," but the 
divine right of love has universal suffrage. 

Every great system must have a center. 
Principals are few and subordinates are many. 
It is true in the realm of matter, and it is true 
in the realm of mind. The solar system has 
the sun for its center. That principle is 
eternal. It cannot be eliminated from the 
mesh of things. From a bee-hive to a universe 
the few have ever ruled. But the many have 
been represented in the few. The sooner this 
twofold truth is lodged in the minds of men, 
the sooner will social and economic harmony 
universally prevail. 

But love is the living center that must 
vitalize the entire mass. That is the sociologi- 
cal secret of Jesus. And that is adequate to 
the demands of all worlds and all ages. That 
truth is primal, central, ultimate, now and 
forever. It is the heart of the Golden Rule, 
and the Golden Rule is the heart of God. 

This Prince is God. That is seen in the 
transcendency of his thought. He flings his 
thought-projectiles far beyond men's mental 



194 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

horizons. Poetry praises the music and beauty 
of his speech. Philosophy is amazed at the 
sweep of his syllogisms. Science is startled at 
the accuracy of his deductions. The consensus 
of humanity crowns him Teacher of all teachers. 

The loftiness of Jesus's love proves him more 
than human. In his own fine phrase he points 
out the border line of mere human love. 
"Greater love hath no man than this, that a 
man lay down his life for his friends." But he 
drank the draft of death that he might press 
the chalice of life to the lips of his foes. That 
breaks over the boundary lines of the human; 
that proves him divine. 

The Prince's power makes him God. He 
mastered every foe that ever mastered men. 
He gave the deathblow to sin. He smote the 
shackles from the slave's soul. He discrowned 
man's destroyer and laid him low. He has 
turned the sluices of salvation into the souls 
of sinners and made them singing saints. That 
record is spread over the pages of history for 
the critic's keenest scrutiny; let men read and 
rejoice. He has wrenched the precious prey 
from the teeth of death. He has sung the 
lyrics of life into the grave's gloom. 

Hail, great Galilean! — Great God. 



LOVE 

God is love. — 1 John 4. 8. 

And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee. — Ruth 2. 16. 

Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all the chords 

with might — 
Smote the chord of self that, trembling, passed in music out 

of sight. — Alfred Tennyson. 

Love's highest service is to stanch the sore 
soul-wounds of Hfe. 

Lust and pitiless passion are love's perver- 
sion. It is like love to forget its own in re- 
membering another's good. It clings to the 
soul like vines to a tree, and naught but death 
can break its tendrils. It was much more 
than mere euphony of speech when poor Poe 
said: 

And neither the angels in heaven above, 
Nor the demons down under the sea. 

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul 
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee. 

Love is a matter of soul with soul. What- 
ever the sex of the lovers may be, it is always 
strongest 'twixt two. Jonathan and David were 
as inseparable as were Ruth and Naomi. 
Naomi was willing to give Ruth up because 
she loved Ruth. Ruth was unwilling to give 

195 



196 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

Naomi up because she loved Naomi. Both 
things are possible, and so are true. 

Naomi knew well the prejudices of both peo- 
ples. She understood what was involved in 
Ruth's return with her. The good woman 
would rather be lonely than to compromise 
Ruth for the sake of her own soul's solace. 
Each would serve the other till death should 
sever them. Therein is shown the redemptive 
spirit that would serve and save mankind. And 
that is the meaning of unforgetting and ever- 
clinging love. Lowell sings: 

Such is true love, which steals into the heart 

With feet as silent as the lightsome dawn 

That kisses smooth the rough brows of the dark. 

And hath its will through blissful gentleness. 

Not like a rocket, which, with passionate glare. 

Whirs suddenly up, then bursts, and leaves the night 

Painfully quivering on the dazed eyes; 

A love that gives and takes, that seeth faults. 

Not with flaw-seeking eyes like needle-points. 

But loving-kindly ever looks them down 

With the o'ercoming faith that still forgives. 

Amid life's bitter bankruptcies God braces 
us up with strong soul-stays. 

Naomi had gone to Moab with the wealth of 
a stalwart husband's love, and having the affec- 
tion of two fond sons. She went out with the 
hope and the promise of spring. With eyes 
veiled in mists of grief, she returned to the 
homeland amid the faded and falling leaves of 



LOVE 197 

autumn. She went away with the sacred 
chalice of her woman's heart abrim with wifely 
and motherly bliss. She came back a mourner 
wrapped about with weeds of woe. 

Thus it ofttimes is in life. Some swift storm 
plunders the heart of its joy and sweeps its 
treasures away. It was deep grief that wrung 
the blood from Rachel's heart. The soul of 
him who wrestled with the celestial visitant at 
Jabbok was harrowed like the plowed bosom of 
a fallow field by the treachery of those whom 
he loved. David's lament over the broken 
body of his wayward boy sobs yet in his psalms. 
That peerless prince in the land of Uz moans 
out his misery on the mocking winds, sitting 
alone on the ash-heap of his burned-out hopes. 
Paul, with bleeding back, drinks the deepest 
dregs of anguish. 

And what shall I say of the Man of Sorrows? 
What painter has pictured his passion? What 
poet has sobbed out in dirge or song the sor- 
rows that swept his heart? 

But in the darkest hour all of these had 
glimpse of day. That is the mystery of mercy. 
That is the wonder of love. Like sunlight 
sifting through the blinding clouds of storm, 
so does God's love shine through the blackest 
clouds of grief. When every other support 
gives way he stays us with his love. His love 



198 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

is the ribbon of light that circles the storm. 
Love is the redemptive force among men. 

"Some souls lose all things but the love of beauty. 
And by that love they are redeemable. 
For in love and beauty they acknowledge good. 
And good is God — the great necessity." 



SOWING AND REAPING 

Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. — 
Apostle Paul. 

The tissues of the life to be. 

We weave with colors all our own; 
And in the field of destiny 

We reap as we have sown. — Whittier. 

Seed-sowing is the most serious business of 
life. We are all sowers. This much the Lord 
of the harvest has decided for us, but he leaves 
with us the solemn task of choosing the seed. 
The enemy tempts us to sow the cockle. It 
will grow with less labor and attention than 
the wheat. He impresses that fact upon us 
to make us false. With our hands so full of 
toil and our backs so bent with burdens, the 
idea of ease is not without attraction. So 
much soil is ready to the sower's hand that he 
is tempted not to till. Weeds will grow almost 
anywhere. The loam of human life needs no till- 
ing for the tares. But in that lies the cogent plea 
for the plowshare. Plunge the point deep in the 
soil. Throw open the fallow fields. Uproot the 
tares. Fling from full palms the precious 
wheat. It will smother the cheat. Weeds will 
wither for lack of nourishment. The wheat 
will wave in welcome harvests by and by. 

199 



OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

The reaper will harvest what he put in the 
soil. It will not be other than what he sowed. 
It will be more in quantity, but the quality 
will be identical. Everything in nature is 
"after its kind"; so is everything in human 
nature. 

The toilers in the fields of truth have lofty 
companions. The renowned of the ages have 
left their footprints in these same fields. Angel 
gleaners are thick among the sheaves. They 
walk the dusty highways of earthly toil. 
Their winnowing wings sweep softly the la- 
borer's brow. If the eyes of the human workers 
could catch sight of these shining companions 
it would lighten many a load. That scene 
would gird the fainting pilgrim. Repose would 
come in the heat of the day, and there 
would be the waxing light of hope at even- 
tide. 

But we were not sent so much to see as to 
serve. Let the harvester go forth with the 
morning's sweet breath on his temples. Let 
him put the keen edge to the waiting wheat. 
God's garner is ready. The harvest is vast. 
The white fields girdle the world. The morn- 
ing dews are sweet with the aroma of ripened 
grain. Let there be no loiterers in the fields 
where the gleaners go. The task is large 
enough to tax the machinery of Christendom. 



SOWING AND REAPING 201 

There is no time for wrangling waste or idle 
disputation. It is the time of the harvest's 
high noon. 

The sickle's work must be in season. The 
ripe grain is in jeopardy if the reaper wait. 
The harvest must be opportune. Once the 
grain is ripe it must not wait for long. 

Many a truth has been lost on the mind 
that was not ready for it. Even God sent not 
his Son till "the fullness of time was come." 
When prophecy was complete he came as 
its fulfiUer. He came at a period of fullness 
in human history. Greek literature and philos- 
ophy were at their zenith when the Sun of 
Righteousness arose. Plato had discovered sin 
and the sinner, but no Saviour. Lucretius in 
his discourse on death was chanting the 
threnody of despair. In this fullness of pagan 
night the splendor of Jesus broke upon the 
w^orld. 

The sower will some day be the reaper. Let 
him not despair. The seed may slumber for a 
season away from sight of men, but it will 
press its way out of the loam into the light. 
God, who takes care of the seeds of flowers, 
will take care of the seeds of faith. He who 
takes care of the seeds of trees will take care 
of the seeds of truth. Therein is thy hope, 
thou sower and reaper. Be faithful to the 



202 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

limit of thy strength, and he will finish what is 
beyond thy reach. Be not baffled with thy 
failure. God will yet bring thy endeavor to 
high and holy success. Honest effort itself is 
moral victory. 



THE DEATH OF DAGON 

And Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground.— 
Prophet Samuel. 

The wages of sin is death. — Apostle Paul. 

All thing betray thee, who betrayest me. — Francit 
Thompson. 

About four thousand Israelites had been 
slain by the Philistines. This disaster created 
great consternation among the leaders of Is- 
rael. Why was it.^^ It was an occasion for 
serious inquiry. 

Disaster sooner or later marks the end of 
the enterprise that leaves out God. During the 
days of all the judges the ark had been at 
Shiloh. When Israel departed from the ark 
they departed from God. That is why four 
thousand dead men lay stark on the gory battle- 
field. Disaster, dissolution, death — that is the 
law of sequence in the career of wickedness. 

The forces of evil will master any people 
when that people breaks faith with God. That 
is the meaning of this great slaughter. It is no 
wonder that some Israelitish leader should say, 
"Let us fetch the ark." Progress and pros- 
perity are impossible without God. But that 
is the story that must be retold to every 
generation. 

203 



204 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

The Ten Commandments were in the ark. 
That chest carried the symbol of the moral 
law. Why did Israel wish to "fetch the ark" 
from Shiloh? "That it may save us." "That 
we may serve God" — ^that would have been a 
nobler purpose. What shall I do to serve and 
save? — that is the Christian's question. "What 
must I do to be saved?" — ^that is the interroga- 
tory of the startled sinner. 

"Let us fetch the ark, that it may save us." 
Does that suggest anything modern? Why not 
put the following considerations in the same 
category? Let us join the church, that it may 
give us social respectability. Let us join the 
church, that it may profit us commercially. 
Let us join the church, that it may give us 
political prestige. Are not all these motives 
one with that old selfish spirit of the Israelites? 
If a man seek the ministry and the benefits of 
the church with such sinister motives as these, 
does he not seek to secure spiritual standing 
without paying the price? That is what men 
call theft in commercial and monetary mat- 
ters. 

The Philistines captured the ark. But what 
could a thimble do if it captured the ocean? 
The thimble has no capacity to contain the 
ocean. How can sin be in harmony with 
righteousness? How can light and darkness 



THE DEATH OF DAGON 205 

dwell together? There is no affinity between 
good and evil. 

These Philistines took the ark of God to 
Ashdod, and set the sacred thing beside their 
idol, Dagon. The next morning the people of 
Ashdod found their man-fish fallen on his face 
before the ark. They fixed him up again, and 
he fell the second time. This time his head 
and his hands were broken off. In that is 
prophecy of pagan dissolution. All other king- 
doms shall be broken in pieces by the kingdom 
of Christ. 



ROOM 

Thou hast set my feet in a large place. — Poet David. 

Thy gentleness hath enlarged me. — Poet David. 

It is your Father's good pleasure to^give you the Kingdom. 
— Jesus of Galilee. 

Be like the bird that, on frail branches swinging, 

A moment sits and sings; 
He feels them tremble, but he keeps on singings 

Knowing that he hath wings. — Victor Hugo. 

Any sphere less than the infinite will hamper 
the soul. Confined in a cage she will pine 
away. Shut up in barns, or stores, or counting- 
houses, she must die. The soul must breathe 
the free air of the everlasting hills. Her un- 
fettered wings must sweep the wide welkin. 
The soul must expand or shrink to zero. She 
is native to life's vastnesses. The soul need 
not be hirpling over the foothills when sun- 
shot peaks wait for the tread of her queenly 
feet. 

If we were born to greatness, our quest 
ought to be for the greatest things. That is 
what the Master meant when he said, "Set 
not your affections on things on the earth, 
but on things above." Mire is no place for 
manhood. Living worth is the only wealth. 
Only righteousness is royal. In a thousand 

206 



ROOM 207 

years the ashes in an emperor's tomb will look 
no better than the dust in the slab-marked 
grave of the pauper. The gnawing tooth of 
time will not cut truth away. Love will live 
when thrones have crumbled and earthly 
crowns have faded. Nothing is good enough 
for the soul to keep that may not be kept 
forever. No little garden plot of pleasure will 
do. The fleshly tent may be pitched in a 
small space, but the spirit-tenter must go on 
many a wide excursion. It is not enough to 
discover the north pole. The soul must find 
worlds. Nothing less than the best is good 
enough for the good. A king must have a 
kingdom. The soul's strong pinions were made 
to soar. 
Hear this music from Mrs. Browning's harp: 

The wind sounds only in opposing straits. 
The sea, beside the shore; man's spirit rends 
Its quiet only up against the ends 
Of wants and oppositions, loves and hates. 
Where worked and worn by passionate debates. 
And losing by the loss it apprehends 
The flesh rocks round, and every breath it sends 
Is raveled to a sigh. All tortured states 
Suppose a straitened place. Jehovah Lord, 
Make room for rest around me. 

But it is sad that the soul may be little. A 
man may be short of soul-stature. The grasp 
of his mind may be small. His spiritual ca- 



208 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

pacity may be cramped. His sympathies may 
be narrow. His psychic vision may be hedged 
by close horizons. Every soul has need for 
enlargement. The expanding influence is not 
far to seek. The Hebrew singer said of God, 
"Thy gentleness hath enlarged me." 

This is the method of heaven. The exalted 
must lift up the lowly. The strong must aid 
the weak. The wise must teach the ignorant. 
The saved must find the lost. The highest 
function of greatness is to enlarge the little. 
Might is called to a mighty ministry. Moral 
might is plethoric with mercy. The greatest 
life is most approachable by the least. Mis- 
fortune appeals to mercy. Dignity is not dis- 
tant. It draws near to serve, not to be served. 

All great souls are sympathetic. Lincoln was 
heartbroken by the sorrows of the common 
people. Gladstone could weep at the grief of a 
little waif. The great and good McKinley said 
of the assassin who so wickedly smote him, 
"Let no one hurt him." The cheeks of Jesus 
were wet with weeping over Jerusalem. His 
sob of sorrow at Lazarus's grave has gone 
around the world like a lyric of love. 

Greatness cannot escape great suffering. 
Jesus was the greatest seer. He was a Man of 
sorrows. The seer always is. He is never 
gladdened by the sight of grief. Great poets 



ROOM 209 

have been great sufferers. "The still, sad music 
of humanity" smites with pain the alert ear 
of genius. But if genius suffers, what of His 
anguish whose greatness transcends genius in- 
finitely beyond its farthest reach.? His sensi- 
tive soul caught the black outlines of every 
sufferer's woe. Gladness and grief mingle in 
the chalice that touches the lips of the great 



GENIUS AND JESUS 

Truly this was the Son of God. — Roman Centurion. 

Strong Son of God. — Alfred Tennyson. 

Behold how he died. And the earth lost its light. And 
see how he came to life, and went up on high again, to carry 
out those truths in which is the life of nations, and in which 
is the health of man's soul. — Henry Ward Beecher. 

Dr. Channing said: "He never lost the pos- 
session of himself in his sympathy with others; 
was never hurried into the impatient and rash 
enterprises of an enthusiastic philanthropy; but 
did good with the tranquillity and constancy 
which mark the providence of God." 

John Stuart Mill committed himself to 
Christ, at least theoretically, in the following 
confession: "About the life and sayings of 
Jesus there is a stamp of personal originality, 
combined with profundity of insight, which 
must place the prophet of Nazareth, even in 
the estimation of those who have no belief in 
his inspiration, in the very first rank of the 
men of sublime genius of whom our species 
boast. When this prominent genius is com- 
bined with the qualities of probably the great- 
est moral reformer and martyr to that mission 
who ever existed upon earth, religion cannot be 

210 



GENIUS AND JESUS 211 

said to have made a bad choice in pitching 
upon this man as the ideal representative and 
guide of humanity; nor, even now, would it be 
easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better 
translation of the rule of virtue from the ab- 
stract into the concrete, than to endeavor so 
to live that Christ would approve our life." 

Rousseau, in speaking of the gospel record, 
said: "The evangelical history bears no marks 
of fiction. The history of Socrates, which no 
one presumes to doubt, is not so well attested 
as that of Jesus Christ." And in speaking of 
the death of Jesus, Rousseau gave utterance to 
that familiar and famous passage so often 
quoted by Christian writers. He said, "If the 
life and death of Socrates are those of a sage, 
the life and death of Jesus are those of a God." 

Theodore Parker said, "It is for his truth and 
for his life, his wisdom, goodness, piety, that he 
is honored in my heart — yes, in the world's 
heart." 

Even Strauss testified: "He remains the high- 
est model of religion within the reach of our 
thought, and no perfect piety is possible with- 
out his presence in the heart." 

The great Richter exclaimed, "Jesus is the 
purest among the mighty, the mightiest among 
the pure, who, with his pierced hand, has raised 
up empires from their foundations, turned the 



212 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

stream of history from its old channels, and 
still continues to rule and guide the ages." 

Finally, the brilliant Renan most beautifully 
says: "Whatever be the surprises of the future, 
Jesus will never be surpassed. His worship will 
grow young without ceasing, his legend will call 
forth tears without end, his sufferings will melt 
the noblest hearts, all ages will proclaim that 
among the sons of men there is none born 
greater than Jesus." 



THE FOOT-FALL OF THE KING 

Behold, thy King cometh. — John 12. 15. 

Jesus not only surveys human life from above, but he 
approaches it from within. — Francis Greenwood Peabody. 

Joy to the world! the Lord is come; 

Let earth receive her King; 
Let every heart prepare him room. 

And heaven and nature sing. — Isaac Watts. 

The world was waiting for that majestic 
step. The Capital City would welcome him. 
It was a city that received him then. Now 
the world gives him ovation. 

His advent has fixed the reckoning point of 
all history. On the pivot of his life the cen- 
turies swing. His track is the trail of light 
that girdles the world. 

His triumphal entry into the great city was 
prophetic of his entry into all cities. It was 
unique. Nothing like it had ever been ac- 
corded to mortal man. The triumph of Pom- 
pey in Rome two thousand years ago was a 
feeble affair compared with that given by 
Christianity to Christ at the daydawn of the 
twentieth century. This was a military victory 
which the Romans celebrated. The hands of 
their conqueror were red with human gore. 
Along the Via Sacra was heard the clanking of 

213 



214 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

the captive's chains. It took two days for the 
line of Pompey's trophies to pass. The trophies 
of Jesus stretch across the spaces of twenty cen- 
turies. No captive's gyves are in that proces- 
sion. But the clink of falling fetters fills all 
the air with the music of freedom. 

The Roman triumph was one of selfishness. 
It was a huge manifestation of greed for glory. 
Its glory was its shame. The Roman's per- 
spective was pitiably deficient. He held that 
Pompey had conquered the world. He forgot 
that the spirit of the world had conquered 
Pompey. 

Humanly speaking, Pompey's triumph was a 
great achievement. Before the triumphal char- 
iot of the Roman chieftain walked three hun- 
dred and twenty -two captive princes. Legends 
on flying banners recorded that he had con- 
quered twenty-one kings, eight hundred ships, 
nine hundred towns, and one thousand castles. 
He made the proud claim that he had sub- 
jugated twelve millions of people. But Pom- 
pey, who had so often stained his hands in the 
gore of his brothers, fell by the assassin's 
hand. 

The achievements of the great Galilean and 
those of Pompey are in no way comparable. It 
is a contrast immeasurably vast. The Roman's 
side of it is made gruesome and ghastly by the 



FOOT-FALL OF THE KING 215 

wicked sword. The trophies of men may be 
counted. The victories of Jesus are innumer- 
able. His court of justice is the final tribunal 
for all civilized lands. His Mountain Sermon 
alone is mightier in its moral influence upon 
men than all the military achievements of the 
world. His Golden Rule is more potent than all 
the records of earthly genius. He breathes, and 
vast civilizations spring into life. Nations are 
now in full blossom that will pour without 
stint their ripened fruit into his waiting and 
open palms. Well may we sing with Mrs. 
Browning: 

Christ hath sent us down the angels; 

And the whole earth and the skies 
Are illumed by altar candles 

Lit for blessed ministries: 
And a Priest's hand through creation, 
Waveth calm and consecration. 

But the Master's earthly career had not yet 
come full circle. His high errand had only 
begun. Hereafter his companions must be 
scarce. Few will be able to accompany him. 
The heights of heroism where he will go are 
too lofty for the feet of men to tread. The 
deep seas of sorrow into which he will plunge 
are beyond the reach of human fathoming. 
The Great Soul must needs be often lonely. 
Only the stoutest mountaineer climbs to the 



216 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

storm-shot heights. Only the highest souls 
tread the loftiest altitudes. Only a few can 
dive where priceless pearls slumber in the deep 
sea. The deepest souls touch the deepest seas 
of sorrow. They are lonely in the far journey 
because they must be. Others cannot go. The 
disciples could not go where Jesus went be- 
cause they could not be what Jesus was. Let 
us not blame them overmuch. They could rest 
among the olives because they knew not the 
vastness of his burden. They could sleep in 
that garden of gloom because they were in- 
capable of being wholly awake to the stupen- 
dous issues that fronted him. 

But nothing could stay the Christ short of 
the goal. He would run the grim gauntlet of 
grief to the end. But whither? He must go 
to the heart-break of Peter's denial. He must 
go to the bitterness of Judas's betrayal. He 
must meet the false courts of Caiaphas and 
Pilate. On must he go to Calvary, to the 
cross, to the sepulcher. His willing feet would 
tread full length the way of woe. Now for a 
little space he halts amid sepulchral shades — 
calm and beautiful. Soon again he will be 
going. There is a rift in the sky. God's angel 
is at the tomb of God's Son. The Roman guard 
faints with fear. The stubborn seal breaks. 
The huge stone rolls from the doorway. The 



FOOT-FALL OF THE KING 217 

great Galilean goes forth from that tomb. He 
goes to Olivet. He goes to God. 

It is the central event of the centuries. It is 
the old, old lesson of love. With her sacrificial 
spirit she goes to the cross. But she goes to 
coronation. She may press her pallid cheek 
against the portals of death, but sweet Life 
will greet her at the gateway. After the cloud- 
burst of sorrow will come the sunburst of joy. 
After the blasts and frosts of winter will come 
the balm and bloom of summer. 

"Ring out false pride in place and blood. 
The civic slander and the spite; 
Ring in the love of truth and right. 
Ring in the common love of good. 

"Ring out old shapes of foul disease; 
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; 
Ring out the thousand wars of old. 
Ring in the thousand years of peace. 

"Ring in the valiant man and free. 
The larger heart, the kindlier hand; 
Ring out the darkness of the land. 
Ring in the Christ that is to be." 



THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR 

The way of transgressors is hard. — Solomon. 
The wages of sin is death. — Paul. 

I have had my will. 

Tasted every pleasure, 
I have drunk my fill 

Of the purple measure: 
Life has lost its zest. 
Sorrow is my guest, 
O, the lees are bitter, bitter — 
Let me rest. — George Arnold. 

The avenger of wrongs is still abroad in the 
world. Penalty is on the track of the wrongdoer. 
The tardy feet of justice will overtake him by 
and by. The darkness of doom seems long de- 
layed, but it will fall some time on the hard- 
ened and impenitent heart as surely as the day 
is followed by the night. 

"Be not deceived; God is not mocked, for 
whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also 
reap." As surely as winter frosts spoil the 
beauty of the fields that bloomed in summer, 
so surely will the fangs of sin bite all beauty 
from the soul. As certainly as the shades of 
night follow the sunset, so surely will darkness 
fall on the soul that sins. 

The avenger follows physical wrongdoing. 
Cut the optic nerve, and blindness is the pen- 

218 



THE TRANSGRESSOR 219 

alty. Destroy the auditory nerve and deafness 
ensues. Paralyze the palate and the tongue, 
and all foods are flavorless. In the body of 
man the result of transgression is death. 

The avenger follows spiritual wrongdoing. 
"The soul that sinneth, it shall die." Trans- 
gress the law of justice long enough, and the 
soul's sense of justice dies. Persistently trans- 
gress the law of purity, and corruption will 
ravish and ruin the heart. 

The only places and persons that deserve 
immortal renown are those that serve and 
save mankind. 

Let the names of Sodom, Gomorrah, Baby- 
lon, Nineveh, Athens, Rome, or rather, let 
their ashes be symbols of sorrow and sin. But 
let the names of Kedesh, Shechem, Hebron, 
Golan, Ramoth-gilead, and Bezer stand in his- 
tory as the symbols of service and salvation. 

"The righteous shall be held in everlasting 
remembrance, but the name of the wicked 
shall rot." Who cares to hear pronounced 
the names of Cain, Herod, Judas, and Nero? 
They are a blot on the face of the world. 
But take these other names to conjure with: 
Abraham, Moses, Job, Paul, Luther, Living- 
stone, and Lincoln. These names are quench- 
less stars that forever flame in the skies of 
human history. 



THE PROMISES OF GOD 

The Lord is not slack concerning his promises. — Apostle 
Peter. 

Though troubles assail, and dangers affright, 
Though friends should all fail, and foes all unite. 
Yet one thing secures us, whatever betide — 
The promise assures us, "The Lord will provide." 

— John Newton. 

They touch every point of human need. 
They touch the sad experience of sin. "If 
any man sin, we have an advocate with the 
Father." "If we confess our sins, he is faithful 
and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse 
us from all unrighteousness." "The blood of 
Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all 
sin." "Let the wicked forsake his way, and 
the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him 
return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy 
upon him, and to our God, for he will abun- 
dantly pardon." 

The promises of God touch us on the side of 
our sorrow. No sane man has entirely escaped 
suffering. All great men are great sufferers. 
The great Galilean was a man of sorrows and 
acquainted with grief. Only the heart of God 
knows the woe of the world. But he knows, 
and he cares. Jesus says to the sorrowing 

220 



THE PROMISES OF GOD 221 

throngs, "Come unto me, and I will rest youJ'^ 
Hear the shout of Paul: "For I reckon that the 
sufferings of this present time are too insig- 
nificant to be compared with the glory that 
shall be revealed in us." "Sorrow and sighing 
shall flee away." There will be a new heaven 
and a new earth. Some sweet day it will be 
said of us, "They have no sorrow." 

God's promises touch us on the side of our 
ignorance. It is like a sunburst on the shadowy 
side of a mountain. How things hitherto hid- 
den appear when the light falls. "If any man 
lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to 
all men liberally and upbraideth not, and it 
shall be given him." 

The promises of God touch us on the side of 
our weakness. How often we lie wounded and 
weaponless on earth's battlefields — strength 
gone, courage gone, all gone but God. Then 
nothing is gone. All we need comes when God 
comes. The bloody battlefield breaks into 
blossom and into song. "Thanks be unto 
God, who giveth us the victory through our 
Lord Jesus Christ." "But my God shall supply 
all your need according to his riches in glory 
by Christ Jesus." "When I am weak, then am 
I strong." "I can do all things through Christ, 
which strengtheneth me." 



OTHER GODS 

Thou shalt have no other gods before me. — First Com- 
mandment. 

Whosoever hath any gold, let them break it off. So they 
gave it me; then I cast it into the fire, and there came out 
this calf. — Aaron. 

When nations are to perish for their sins. 
In human hearts the leprosy begins. 

—W. W. Hayes. 

Israel's long association with the Egyp- 
tians had its influence. Life will tell for right 
or wrong. It is never neutral. The social air 
one breathes somehow affects the soul. 

To keep God supreme in the soul — that is 
where the Israelites failed. Is it not where 
others fail? Is not that the point at which we 
fail? 

Men are constantly calling for other gods. 
Look at some of them. Man may be a master, 
but among other things he is an idol-maker. 

There is the golden calf of pride. But what is 
pride? It is a false estimate of oneself. It 
gives a wrong perspective of life. Pride over- 
estimates one's own worth and undervalues 
that of others. 

Let no one think that good taste, laudable 
ambitions to be something and to do some- 

222 



OTHER GODS 223 

thing in the world have any of the characteris- 
tics of pride. High ideals will lift one above 
the lowlands of personal pride. 

Self-respect is far removed from pride. It is 
essential to success in any sphere of worthy 
service. There is as much difference between 
pride and self-respect as there is between a 
puffball and a peach. Puncture the puffball 
and it gives you wind; puncture the peach and 
it gives you substance. Pride is hollow; self- 
respect has substance. Putting it in small 
compass, pride is a spirit that worships the 
golden calf of self. And that is always a very 
small calf. 

Fashion may he a golden calf. It always is 
when it appeals to lust. It always is when it 
compromises modesty. "Let everything be 
done decently and in order" — that is the 
Pauline pattern. Decency and order — those 
two principles contain the finest there is in 
good taste and the best there is in beauty. 
It is only the true that is really attractive. 
Every flashy fashion that is false is a calf of 
gold. Peafowls are all right in the barnyard, 
but we do not need them to strut in society. 

Position may he a calf of gold. It is always 
that when a man sacrifices worthy principles 
to get it. There is where the politician's peril 
lies. The position is attractive; it is honorable. 



224 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

and a man is apt to be tempted to pay the 
price of principle to secure it. Any position is 
wrong for you if you must give up right to get 
it. Appetites, ambitions, passions, and pleas- 
ures have set up many a golden calf before 
which men have bowed in slavish devotion. 



PAUL IN ATHENS 

Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said. Ye 
men of Athens. — Acts 17. 22. 

Athens, the eye of Greece! Mother of arts 
And eloquence! Native to famous wits. — Milton. 

Paul found the Athenians frivolous and profligate — their 
very culture luring them to vice, and their religion an incen- 
tive to shameless debauchery. — Lyman Abbott. 

Ponder these points in Paul's sermon, re- 
membering the place and the occasion of its 
delivery. 

"Too superstitious." Paul pointed out a 
fault the first thing, but it was not done in a 
faultfinding spirit. Faults must be found out 
before they can be corrected. No temple is 
built till the debris is cleared away. Herein 
did Paul show that he was a wise master- 
builder. 

Notice that this great preacher pointed out 
the fault first which would awaken the least 
antagonism, or, perhaps, none at all. The 
Athenians were pleased to be considered re- 
ligious. Paul recognized at once that they 
were religious. 

Paul's form of addressing the Athenians con- 
formed to the custom of their renowned ora- 
tors. He said, "Ye men of Athens." That 

225 



226 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

sounded like Demosthenes. The preacher must 
be wise as well as courageous. 

"Your devotions." That was commendable. 
He had recognized that. But he would have 
them turn their devotions in the right direc- 
tion. This wise teacher would have the feel- 
ings of devotion directed by intelligence. He 
taught the Athenians that they could know 
the God whom they had "ignorantly wor- 
shiped." 

"God, the maker of the world." That teach- 
ing must have tested their credulity. They had 
been making their own gods. Now they were 
hearing of a God whom no man made, but who 
made all men; further, he made all things. 

The tendency of the Greek mind was to 
personify everything in nature. The Greek's 
love of nature was his passion. On this basis 
of love for nature the philosophic apostle 
would establish the conviction of a personal 
God back of nature. On this basis he would 
establish the idea of a personal Creator back 
of creation. 

Paul took the pupil where he found him. He 
must take him then and there or not at all. 
He was so generous with these Greeks that he 
allowed it to be possible for them to worship 
God and still in some sense be ignorant of him. 
It is not a system of theology, but the simple 



PAUL IN ATHENS 227 

truth that a man must accept in order to be 
saved. 

Spiritual worship. That was another great 
point in this sermon by Paul. The mind of 
man has always been materialistic. Men be- 
lieve that what they touch is true. It is easy 
to forget that the intangible mind is as real as 
tangible matter and far more potent in deter- 
mining the destinies of men. 

The true worship of God does not depend 
upon the temple, but on the spirit of truth in 
the worshiper. It is not the temple spire that 
points skyward, but the upward-looking heart 
that pleases God. It is not church chancels, 
but Christian characters that are priceless in 
God's sight. 

The brotherhood of nations. That was a 
revelation. The wisest minds of the day had 
scarcely been able to grasp so great a truth. 
The welfare of one man was in some way re- 
lated to the welfare of all men. That is the 
great truth which is still in the birth-throes of 
Christian philosophy. Men are still on the 
outskirts of that kingdom which Christ came 
to establish. The sun was made to shine on all 
the sons of men. God made the atmosphere 
for all men on the earth to breathe. The Christ 
was no monopolist, but a great cosmopolite. His 
compassion compassed the sorrows of all men. 



228 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

It was he who taught all men to say, as brothers, 
"Our Father." 

Paul taught that God is close to every man. 
No pilgrimages are needed to find him. His 
word is sounding near us if only our hearts will 
heed. His hand is always close enough for the 
prodigal's palm to touch. His warm breath of 
love is always breathing on the penitent's 
cheek. 



THE ENDURANCE OF LOVE 

Love never faileth. — Apostie Paul. 

Love is our highest word and the synonym of God. — 

Emerson. 

For Thine is the glory of love. 

And Thine the tender power. 
Touching the barren heart 

To leaf and flower — 
Till not the lilies alone. 

Beneath Thy gentle feet. 
But human lives for Thee 

Grow white and sweet. — W. J. Dawson. 

Love is a little word, but it is surcharged 
with measureless might. It gives the clue to 
all the conquests of Christendom. Love is the 
beautiful bow of promise that overarches the 
spiritual world. See the splendid colors that 
Paul has pointed out. 

"Love suffereth long, and is kind." 

Many a man has suffered long, and is cruel. 
But to suffer long and to smile through it — 
there is the test of spiritual supremacy. 
To feel the iron in one's soul and still be 
kind — that is conquest unknown to the giants 
of military warfare. Success in such endurance 
requires something superhuman. But such is 
Christian love. That is the love that comes to 
the heart with the coming of Christ. 

"Love envieth not." 

229 



230 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

His heart is evil who grieves at another's 
good. It is the sinner, and not the saint, who 
is stung by a brother's success. The feet of 
envy are sandaled with sin, and can never win 
in life's swift race. The hands of envy are 
calloused with long delving in things that are 
cruel, and they cannot feel the velvet palms of 
their superiors. The eyes of envy are dim 
with looking long on darkness. Envy's ears 
are heavy for having long been closed against 
the music of mercy. Envy's heart is hard, for 
it has long been seared with selfishness and sin. 
"Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up." 
Envy speaks in swelling words. The speech 
of love is like the mellow moonlight and as 
gentle as the dew. Love steals in amid the 
damp and shaded places of the soul like sun- 
light sifting through the leaves of forest trees. 
Envy stares and struts. Love stoops amid the 
meanest miseries to serve her fellow man. 

Such ever was love's way; 
To rise, it stoops. 

"Love seeketh not her own." 

What is one's own.f^ Empty-handed we came 
into the world. Empty-handed we go out of 
it. While the swift years go we clutch a few 
things, then at the end we let them go. Noth- 
ing is worth having here whose essence we can- 
not take with us yonder. 



THE ENDURANCE OF LOVE 231 

Love is self-forgetful in remembering others. 
No man ever gets his rights by doing wrong. 
Good thus secured turns to evil, and, like a 
picked flower, fades and withers in the hand. 

"Love is not easily provoked." 

Love is as sensitive as the apple of the eye. 
It is as susceptible as the photographer's plate. 
But in seeking the good of others, love sheds a 
slight as a steep roof sheds rain. 

Anger, wrath, malice are a wanton waste of 
manhood. They plunder the heart of its 
power. To hold hatred in one's heart is like 
holding fire in one's hand. A man makes the 
best progress when he is slow to wrath. 

"Love thinketh no evil." 

Thoughts make men. Good thoughts make 
good men. Bad thoughts make bad men. "As 
a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." Love 
grows good thoughts as hotbeds grow seeds. 
Love scatters kind words and kind deeds as 
the sun scatters his beams. 

"Love rejoiceth in the truth." 

He is false who has a relish for the false. 
The true man loves truth as the bees love 
honey. The honest heart holds truth above 
the price of rubies. He who sells truth at any 
price purchases condemnation at infinite cost. 

Faith, hope, and love abide because they are 
sprung from the heart of God. The brightest 



232 OUR SPIRITUAL SKIES 

flowers and the brightest faces must fade. 
Love alone is fadeless. Nothing is good if 
love be not at its heart. She holds in her 
hands the branches of healing for all the 
bitter springs of life. She speaks the magic 
word that turns the saddest sobs to songs. 
Love is life's central sun, and when she dies no 
good can live for long. God is love, and all 
that is lovely comes from him. 

Self is the only prison that can ever bind the soul; 
Love is the only angel that can bid the gates unroll; 
And when he comes to call thee, arise and follow fast; 
His way may lie through darkness, but it leads to light at 
last. — Henry van Dyke. 



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